


File Recovery

by xerios



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Implied/Referenced Infanticide, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pre-War Cybertron, Slavery, political corruption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:26:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 44,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerios/pseuds/xerios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His brother turned his gaze to him, expression no longer neutral but one of contemplation. There was a measured silence, as the ramifications of the situation were being processed. Finally, Optimus folded his arms over his chest and asked, "What is the last thing you remember?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awake

His optics felt strange, like they had somehow readjusted themselves when he wasn't paying attention. This was the first thought that rose up as his processor rebooted and he tried to bring his visual centers online. It was the only thought that soaked into his mind before every sensor in his body started to scream in pain. Several sub-systems immediately shut down again, though not quickly enough to stem the harsh shriek that broke through his vocalizer. His body reacted subconsciously, back arching upwards, limbs convulsing, but he found himself restrained, weighty straps holding him against a cold surface.

It was then that he realized that two of his limbs were missing, the sensors where they had attached having been the first to have gone numb.

Then the world reasserted itself in a blinding fashion, bright lights shining down over his unfocused optics. He recognized the glare as the type used in medical facilities, which explained where he was but not how he had gotten there. He blinked, turning his head away from the light to try and focus on something, anything else but everything was blurred.

"He's awake!"

The shout sounded distant yet close. It was followed shortly by other voices, hurriedly speaking, all with the same muffled quality. It appeared that his auditory sensors were also malfunctioning. There was movement around him. He caught a flicker of reflective green as it passed in front of his blurred gaze, and then suddenly more weight than the straps was pressing him into the table.

He made a conscious effort to stop moving, having realized that he had still been thrashing about uncontrollably. He turned his head, trying to see who was holding him down. His optics, still unfocused, found only the nearest splashes of color. An arm, pushing down on his chest, blue and red intermixed.

His brother.

He relaxed, though the pain still raged in his systems, finding some small comfort in the thought that at the very least the one mech he trusted over any other was there. He sought out his brother through their bond but found it difficult, as if they had been closed off from each other for an extended amount of time. This confusion was only compounded upon by the surprise and suspicion his brother's spark threw back at him the moment the connection between them was re-established. It was accompanied by a powerful, underlying anger.

Anger that, for the most part, was aimed directly at him.

He recoiled from the connection, too stunned to prevent it from closing again. Squirming, he struggled to gain control of his vocalizer, pain lancing through him as he attempted to use it. He forced himself to ignore it, focusing his optics as best he could on his brother's armor.

"O—Op—Opti—mus," he managed to choke out, pausing in surprise at the sound of his own voice. It was coarse and somewhat deeper than it should have been. Maybe it was his injury, causing this difference, but a nagging horrible feeling at the back of his processor said, no, this was not the case. He saw the sharp blue of his brother's optics turn to him, burning with the same restrained anger he had felt in trying to contact the other's spark. He felt an unfamiliar terror well up to join the confusion already running rampant in his CPU. "Wha—what...what did I do?"

Surprise replaced the anger in Optimus's gaze for a moment, but it faded a second later as his brother quickly looked away.

Shuddering, he felt the cold prick of something being injected into one of the main energon lines in his neck. He turned, the reflective green armor again within the blurred range of his vision. He couldn't recall ever having met someone with that particular paint scheme let alone a medic. He felt the pain start to lessen somewhat and the haze of a sedative start to invade his processor. He fought against it, whipping his head back towards his brother again.

"No, wait...tell me—tell me, please, what did I do? What did I do!? Why...why..."

He trailed off, no longer able to put the energy into resisting the sedative. Darkness flooded his processor, systems shutting down again one by one, until nothing was left but the void of a forced recharge.


	2. Damage Report

When he next onlined the pain was still present, but somewhat dulled. Either his systems had adjusted to it or the sedatives had been supplemented with painkillers. No part of his internal subroutines shut down this time, everything remained active. Feedback from his sensors formed into damage reports that flashed before his optics, informing him on the extent of each injury.

Left arm, non-functional.

Sensory feedback ended at the neural junction in his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw that it had been hastily and inexpertly removed. A few dead cables still dangled there, draped over the table's edge. One of the straps holding him down hooked over his collar just above the shoulder, tighter than it had been the last time he had roused.

Right leg, less than twenty percent functionality.

It was cut off from just above the knee, and, while he didn't really need to look to know it would hold the same roughly severed appearance as his shoulder, he tried anyway. The straps held him to the table, all leeway gone.

Another readout leapt to the forefront as he shut down those detailing his major limbs. This one flashed more urgent than the rest, demanding immediate attention. The first few lines took a few moments to register, and then with a growing horror he struggled to sit up, straining his neck against the restraints keeping his head down. His optics only caught the edges of the scorched and melted metal that had at one time compromised the armored plates covering his chest.

Blackened, malformed, no longer sleek, silver, and close-fitting. Beneath it he could picture his spark chamber, compromised by the same searing heat that must have destroyed his chest plates. Possibly fused to the rest of his internals, interfering with other systems.

His vents launched into action, sputtering at a mere thirty percent functionality as they tried to soothe his now panicked systems with cool air. He coughed, vocal processor and intake tube working to assist his struggling vents. The pain was starting to grow sharper, adding another edge to the panic.

Something had burned through his chest.

_Something had burned through his chest._

The panic began to subside, leaving only the pain. He scanned the rest of the lines scrolling over his visual centers. His repair systems were working overtime to fix his spark chamber, already having closed it off to avoid contamination. He shuttered his optics, the feeling that they were maladjusted rising up again. A short diagnostic revealed their functionality to be near ninety percent, with a few minor aberrations in the time it took for the lenses to focus. Nothing physically wrong with them, or at least nothing internal repairs couldn't eventually fix. The thought crossed his processor that somehow they had changed color. Quick enough to check, the resulting readout confirming that they were indeed running a different hue than the standard white he had been sparked with.

Instead they had been dialed to red.

A door opened somewhere to his right and the lights, previously dimmed, sprang up to full intensity as he shifted his head to look. A mech entered the room, quickly closing the distance between the floor and the table; armor the same reflective green from before. The bot didn't pause to look at him, but moved to a row of cabinets situated on the other side of the table. A glimpse past the closing door indicated a larger space, brightly lit with a sterile scent seeping through to his olfactory sensors. It disappeared as the doors snapped shut again and he was suddenly aware that his current quarters held a less than pleasant stench. His scanners fed back a list of chemicals, mostly decaying carbon base molecules, sodium chloride, and calcium, all originating from somewhere on or in his frame.

He turned towards the mech - the medic - distracted from the unpleasant scent by the sound of hinges opening and drawers rolling open and shut. He spotted the containers already set aside on the smaller table next to where he was strapped down. A syringe lay there, needle capped, but its mere presence sent a shiver down his spinal column.

More sedatives.

They didn't want him awake.

"Where is Optimus?"

Again, his voice felt and sounded strange, alien to his own audio sensors. Rougher, corroded, and deeper in a way that couldn't simply be damage to his vocal processor or a conscious adjustment of the inbuilt settings. The medic didn't respond, but kept his back turned as he searched through the cabinets.

"Where is Optimus?" he repeated, increasing the volume despite the fact that it caused some amount of pain. "Whe-where is my brother?"

No answer, no response of any kind.

He reached out with his spark, seeking his brother as he had the previous cycle, if it had even been so short a time. He had the feeling he'd offlined far longer than that. He found the same difficulties in establishing the link, though he wasn't greeted with the same amount of surprise as before. The suspicion was still there, the anger was still there, but both were held in check. He felt his brother's spark reach back, sternly questioning the connection.

_/Where are you?/_

Embedded in the question itself was his own confusion, the underlying panic that hadn't disappeared as completely as he had hoped, and his fear. He wanted to ask more, tried to keep his queries from tangling together as he sent them through the link, but failed somewhat in that respect. Confusion radiated back from his brother's spark, compounding on his own.

The suspicion returned and so did the prick of the needle.

"No, wait!"

He tried to twist away, but the straps were efficient. Cold chemicals flowed into his energon lines and he shuddered, reaching back across the bond to his brother, pleading for answers, anything before the darkness took hold again. There was no reply as the sedatives took hold of his processor, shutting down his systems one by one.

But the link was still active.


	3. Lucid

_He stepped out of the elevator and into the darkness of the foyer, optics immediately drawn to the irregular rectangle of light on the floor. It emanated from the washroom and was usually an indicator of one of two things - either it was in use or Optimus had forgotten to turn it off again. Since the rest of the joint area was dark, he was inclined to guess the latter, but as he stepped deeper into the room he saw a shadow moving against the light._

_He walked up to the door frame and found his brother sitting in the middle of the washroom with a bucket of dark blue paint on the floor next to him. Nearly all the red portions of his armor had been painted over, save for a few panels on his back which he was currently attempting to get at. His arm, however, did not appear to bend that way. It was apparent by the blue splotch marks on the tile that he had tried and failed quite a few times._

_"Did you rearrange my desk?"_

_The brush was promptly dropped, adding several more spots of paint to the floor._

_"What!"_

_"Did you rearrange my desk?" he repeated, leaning with his shoulder pressed against the door frame. He observed as his brother picked the brush off the floor, inspecting it closely in what seemed a bid to stall for time to think. Optics narrowing, he folded his arms across his chest. "Well?"_

_"No?"_

_"Then why the frag is it a complete mess?"_

_"Maybe it's because you're extremely disorganized," Optimus commented, balancing the paint brush on top of the bucket before looking back up at him. "Have you actually seen your room lately?"_

_"When were you in my room?"_

_"About two orns ago, you left the door open and forgot to turn off your alarm."_

_This part was said with an accusatory glare, to which he responded by rolling his optics._

_"I apologize if it interrupted your extended recharge cycle."_

_Optimus threw him a profoundly annoyed look, before standing to inspect himself in the mirror._

_"You missed a spot."_

_This earned him another, more irritated glare._

_"Why are you painting yourself blue?"_

_"I have a date," Optimus answered with a loud sigh, halfway open vents hissing in defeat. "This is never going to work."_

_"I gather this was Jazz's idea."_

_"He said if I went with one solid color I wouldn't look like me."_

_"That's brilliant. It's working already."_

_"Frag off."_

_"No, really, I hardly recognized you."_

_"Look, if you're not going to help—"_

_"Give me the brush, glitch-head."_

_Looking sullen at the insult, but not bothering to argue back, Optimus picked up the brush and the bucket from the floor, quickly handing them over._ _He took them both, setting the paint on the counter before motioning for his brother to turn around._

_Compliance was sullen and slouching, but it was there._

_He ignored Optimus's sulking posture and began painting over the remaining red panels on his brother's back. It took a little longer than it should have, as there were already splotches on the paint marring the surface from Optimus's failed attempts to reach over his shoulder. These first needed to be smoothed out and painted over, followed by a third coat just to be certain that every bit of red was gone. Eventually, he stepped back and set the brush down._

_"There, you're done."_

_"Does it look alright?"_

_"It's a vast improvement," he replied, as his brother attempted to twist around for a look at the newly painted panels. "I'd say you're about ten percent less ugly."_

_"I'm being serious."_

_"So am I."_

_The look Optimus threw him this time was not one of annoyance, but one that looked almost pleading. Amusement faded, and he was forced to glance away from his brother's deep blue gaze. He absolutely hated it when Optimus got that look in his optics._

_"You look fine."_

_"Really?"_

_"Who're you seeing?"_

_"I don't know."_

_"You don't know."_

_"It was Jazz's idea," Optimus reminded him. "I kind of, sort of, agreed to letting him set me up on a blind date."_

_A multitude of snide remarks entered his processor. It took a great deal of effort for him to ignore them and maintain a completely neutral expression, but somehow something must have gotten through for his brother to start glaring at him again._

_"It's not funny!"_

_"I didn't say anything!"_

_"You were thinking it, I could tell!"_

_He sighed, air hissing out through the vents on the side of his face as he reached over to pat his brother's shoulder._

_"You'll be fine, Optimus."_

_"I hope so," his brother muttered, looking worried. "I hope this one's different, I_ _wa_ nt you to run a scan on his memory core."

His optics onlined at nearly a hundred percent this time around, and while he was once again bombarded with readouts on his injuries, he ignored them, turning his head towards the sound of his brother's voice. It sounded deeper, the tones more commanding, but diluted due to interference from the door. It was still recognizable, but the difference made him feel uneasy. His own voice was alien, almost no trace of his old vocal patterns left within the rough cut edges of sound that left his vocalizer now. Somewhere at the back of his processor the thought that time was responsible for these changes inferred itself.

He stared at the door.

It was solid and heavy, but the walls around the frame were blank. There were no emergency keypads or signature readers of any sort, just what appeared to be a proximity scanner mounted near the ceiling. The locking mechanisms were on the outside.

The room was built to keep things in, maybe specifically for him.

He felt that the link to his brother's spark was still active, though nothing flowed along it. He was shut off, but not disconnected; he could feel his brother there nearby. A small amount of relief flooded his systems, proximity and the sheer factor of the connection stilling his nerves for the time being. He was still in pain, yes. He was still strapped down, yes. He still had no idea how this situation had come to be, but that link at least seemed to give him some hope of finding out.

"No."

Or not.

"Ratchet—"

It seemed that despite appearances to the contrary, the medic actually did have a name.

"Your words, Prime— 'No repairs and no diagnostics that do not directly pertain to how the frag _**he**_ even survived'."

Survived.

A key word; he wasn't supposed to be alive.

"I do not recall having cursed when I said that."

"Point is, there are only a few things in his CPU that would be useful in determining how and why his _**spark**_ reignited, and none of those processes route through his memory core."

"Isn't knowing the extent of the damage, all damage—"

"Don't you try and twist this around, Optimus. You and I both know that's not the reason why you want a look at his memory core."

"If his memory is damaged to such a point that he can't physically recall…"

There was a pause as Optimus trailed off. He felt a brief flash of what might have been sadness, maybe grief, snap through their bond.

"What justice is there in keeping him locked in here like this if he can't even recall the reasons for it?"

Another pause, as if the medic were considering an appropriate answer.

"There are several mechs on this base who would argue against letting him loose no matter what a memory core scan showed."

"I know."

"There are several mechs on this base who have argued against the current arrangements as well."

"I know."

"I'll go get the equipment."


	4. File Corruption

He watched as the door slid open, admitting his brother into the room. The startled look on Optimus's face told him that he wasn't supposed to be awake yet. His brother's expression instantly became one of stern neutrality. He recognized it as the same one his brother had always used when dealing with their sire. It was always impossible to discern his emotions whenever he wore that face.

It worked better than his battle mask sometimes.

Unfortunately, with that expression came a lessening of their bond. The faint traces of feelings he had picked up earlier vanished as they locked gazes. The link slackened to the point that the only thing he could feel from it was his brother's presence, due more in part to proximity than the actual bond itself.

His spark clenched.

It drowned out the pain of his injuries for a minor moment, as all his sensors were distracted. It made sense, seeing as his spark chamber was currently the most damaged part of him, but it made him shudder involuntarily. He shuttered his optics, waiting for the spasms to pass completely before he opened them again.

After what seemed like far too long, the pain receded, falling into the background.

"Optimus?"

"I'm here."

It was a statement of fact, bland and blunt.

Like a youngling in primary education answering an attendance call, only his voice was less bored and far older. Again, the thought of time slid through the crevices of his processor. He was missing some, of that he was a hundred percent certain, but he didn't know how much. He onlined his optics to look again at his brother, not just his face or his expression, but everything all at once.

Like his voice, Optimus was still recognizable as his brother, but his appearance had changed somewhat strangely. His armor was still blue and red, though far more vibrant with the latter color forming what appeared to be stylistic flames. The armor itself, however, appeared to have been reconfigured. It confused him as to why this was so. After all, the armor he remembered, the panels he'd painted blue, had been his final frameset. There were few, if any, reasons to alter a mech's final armor. Barring extreme physical injury, they kept that frame for the rest of their lives.

He started to ask about it, but stopped himself.

It was not the question he wanted to ask, and definitely not the one he wanted answered. He sucked some air into his vents, trying to steady himself as he raise his gaze back up to meet his brother's.

"Why are you mad at me?"

For a fraction of a second, Optimus's expression faltered. A moment later, his brother was slowly shaking his head, refusing to supply even the smallest of explanations. Again he felt his spark clench, tighter than before. He jerked against the restraints holding him in place and tried to block out the pain. Dental plates gritted, he fought against crying out until the worst of it had subsided and even then, his voice came out too harsh and too loud for his own audio sensors.

"Why won't you tell me!" he shouted, straining in vain to sit upright or at least raise his head high enough off the table. "What happened! To you? To me? Why are my optics locked on red! Why is-"

His vocal processors locked up briefly, protesting, but he over-rid the safety protocols not caring if he broke a circuit as he continued on.

"-my voice, why is it different! Why is yours different! Why are you _**mad**_ at me!"

Again, his brother's face fell from its guarded expression, though this time it seemed to take apparent effort for it to return to that mask of neutrality.

"Megatron-"

"I swear to Primus, if you tell him anything right now, I'll lock _**you**_ in an isolation room too."

The medic had returned. He hadn't even heard the door open, but then again, he'd been too focused on venting himself to actually pay attention to the surrounding room. He watched, jaw tightening, as the reflective green mech wheeled in a separate table stacked with equipment and a holographic monitor. The scanner was one only used in surgeries involving a bot's central processor, not only to monitor activity but to pick up any aberrations or glitches that might cause such a delicate operation to go awry.

He wasn't exactly certain how he knew that.

"Move, you're blocking the outlet."

He could have almost laughed as Optimus hastily shuffled away from the medic. Any other time, any other place, he probably would have, but right now he just wanted someone to answer even just one of his questions.

The scanner was placed directly next to his table, close enough that he could see whatever read out it would generate. Set up didn't take very long, but watching the medic adjusting the machine, he could see that the mech was extremely tensed. The reflective green mech was pointedly avoiding his gaze, ignoring him yet again. Optimus's anger with him, restrained as it was, did not seem to be an isolated incident. Whatever he had done, it had caused the medic no small amount of ire as well.

There was a soft hum as the machine came to life.

"Keep in mind that whatever this shows, no one on this base is going to change their minds about letting him loose," the medic said without looking up. "Not even me."

"I know, Ratchet, I know."

He looked back over at his brother, a sudden thought running rampant through his processor. His brother's armor was different, yes, but his overall size was the same. He turned his head to look at the medic and saw that his own armor held almost the same kind of unconventional shaping as his brothers. And there were symbols on the shoulder panels, a sigil vaguely resembling that of the seal of Iacon sat amidst foreign letters aligned along a circle forming the words 'search and rescue'.

He frowned at that.

It wasn't Cybertronian, ancient or modern, but he understood the words clearly.

He shuttered his optics.

"We're not on Cybertron."

He didn't phrase it as question, because the answer had made itself evident. His brother's armor was different because he had scanned something other than the conventional Cybertronian alternate form that came with his final frameset. Whatever planet they were on, there was the compulsion to blend in ingrained into their systems. This one must have been technologically advanced enough to actually allow for it.

When he opened his optics again, the holographic screen was lit up. He had barely felt the tingle of the scanner as it had run through its preprogrammed examination of his central processor. The screen was now scrolling information. Lines and diagrams representing various components materialized and rotated. Several areas were blinking, but from his angle the text was blurred. It was not a fully three-dimensional hologram, so looking at it from the back the finer details were usually lost.

He transferred his gaze to the medic instead. There was a deep, contemplating frown there that tightened as the mech's blue-green optics surveyed the image.

"Well?" Optimus asked, glancing between the display and the medic. He hadn't read it, probably didn't understand what it meant anyway. His brother had never been good with anything but basic first aid and even then, he sometimes failed to read the instructions on the kits correctly. "What is it?"

"Around fifty-three percent of the files in his memory core are corrupted."

"You can't tell which ones?"

"Frag no. I'm psychic, but I'm not that psychic."

"I see."

His brother turned his gaze to him, expression no longer neutral but one of contemplation. There was a measured silence, as the ramifications of the situation were being processed. Finally, Optimus folded his arms over his chest and asked, "What's the last thing you remember?"


	5. Partial Decode

For a long moment, an immaturity ceased him, making him want to refuse to answer the question just like his brother had refused to answer his own queries. There was no fairness in supplying a response when none had been given to him.

The rational side of his processor won out.

"I—I was helping you paint over the red," he replied, forgetting that his arm was strapped down as he tried to gesture with it. A short, sharp pain bit into his sensors. He'd strained a rotor with that attempt of motion. "That—that assistant of yours...Jazz, he set you up on a blind date."

He noticed them tense the moment he mentioned the smaller silver mech that had always been attempting to 'fix' his brother's love life. The medic's shoulders went rigid, optics shuttering as he turned his head away. Optimus stiffened as well, one of his hands slowly clenching itself into a fist.

His gaze flickered between the two of them as a cold, numb feeling began to crawl through his circuits.

"W—wh—what happened?"

He saw his brother glance at the medic, who glared back for a moment before relenting with a slight incline of his head.

"Megatron, it's—it's been more than a hundred thousand vorns since that day," his brother said, tone serious and low. The words were not meant to leave the room. "Jazz is dead."

He knew it by the way it was said, that he had been the one to kill the smaller mech.

It would explain his brother's anger at the very least, and the medic's as well, if the mech had been a friend of the bot. Not outside the realm of possibility, considering how socially oriented the silver mech was. He had even somewhat liked him, despite the bot's habit of popping into his office unannounced.

He suddenly felt a wave of nausea hit his tank, but there was nothing there to purge. He twisted his head away so he wouldn't have to look at them as a series of hacking coughs escaped his vocalizer. Dry heaves, that's what it was called, when the fuel tank was too empty for retching to draw anything back up the intake tube. The spasms subsided quickly, but the feeling of nausea didn't fade, only falling to the background to wait alongside the pain.

The rest of his brother's words rolled forward in his processor, a welcome if brief distraction.

He'd been right to suspect a passage of time, but a hundred thousand vorns was far longer than even he had calculated.

It was too much to fathom.

He felt a brief, inquisitive brush against his spark preceding his brother's voice inside his head.

_/Megatron—/_

_/I killed him didn't I Optimus?/_

There was a sensation of hesitation before the reluctance of a reply.

_/Yes./_

_/Why?/_

_/I do not know./_

_/It's why you're angry with me, isn't it?/_

Again a pause before the answer. He heard his brother sigh, vents expelling excessive air. To an observer, it would have sounded impatient, but through their link he felt that it was filled with sorrow.

_/That is…part of it./_


	6. Sustenance

_He walked into his office to find one of the couriers standing before his desk, straightening his inbox. It was an odd sight, not just because it was well past the time when the morning messages were supposed to be in, but due in part to the fact that his desk was almost as tall as the slim bot's shoulders. The inbox itself was piled high with reports from not only the rest of Central Tower, but most of the other buildings in Capitol Square as well. The courier had taken them all out and had separated them into piles, standing on the very edges of her pedes to do so._

_As he watched, she began to stack the files back into the inbox, carefully and neatly arranging them so that they would not collapse into another haphazard mess as they had been before. Once she had finished with that task, she shuffled over to the outbox to collect the data pads waiting to be distributed._

_It was then that he moved further into the room, though she appeared to be too absorbed with the process of reorganizing the outgoing mail to notice._

" _What are you doing here?"_

_A yelp, and the outbound reports were on the floor._

_Bright blue optics wide and panicked, the courier turned slowly to face him, shoulders hunched and shaking. It was obvious she hadn't expected for him to be there._

_He walked over to his desk, glancing briefly around the side at the data pads now covering the floor before turning his gaze to the inbox. It took merely a brief survey to know that nothing was missing. In fact, the reports now stacked there were in perfect both chronologically and by priority._

_He looked at the femme._

" _You organized my inbox."_

_She nodded, head bobbing up and down rapidly._

" _Are you the one who usually straightens it?"_

_Again a quick nod._

" _Where were you the past three orns?"_

_She glanced downwards, hesitating for a moment before answering._

" _This one was injured."_

_It was a quiet voice, one not used to speaking, but the wording was specific and unmistakable. Only downcasts referred to themselves as 'this one' and as he peered closely at the side of her face he saw the marks etched into the dull grey-blue panel overlaying her jaw, declaring it. He glanced back at the inbox and its renewed organization. He picked up the report on the very top of the stack and sat down in his chair before letting his gaze drift back to the courier._

" _You're late for your other deliveries aren't you?"_

" _Yes sir."_

" _Then you should get going."_

_She immediately dropped down to gather up the scattered data pads. He watched as they were collected, the little femme taking the time to arrange them neatly before fleeing his office as fast as her stick legs could carry her._

_Chuckling to himself, he looked down at the report, lifting the energon cube he'd brought out with him to his mouth to take a sip. The re_ adouts on his injuries coupled with the ache in his empty tank were making it hard for him to recharge. The sedative he'd been given this time around hadn't helped too much and though he'd heard his brother asking the medic that he be allowed sustenance, he couldn't really see that happening any time soon.

Which was why he was surprised, when the door slid open to Optimus with a cube of energon in hand.

It was set aside for a moment, as his brother moved to adjust the top half of the table slightly higher. As it rose his gaze fell, not on his missing leg and the few cables that hung loose from it, but his remaining functioning hand, if it could be called a hand. The fingers were elongated and tapered into sharpened edges, nothing more than claws.

He felt the straps on his arm and neck loosen just enough so he could lift his hand to his mouth, but he couldn't look away.

Claws.

He had claws.

A brief image flashed through his processor, of those claws, _his claws, ripping through metal, tearing out vital components. Energon lines spilling open onto his armor, coating it. A spark chamber, shredded and then discarded like something worthless, trash._

He retched again, turning to the side as each haggard cough sent violent shudders through his frame.

As the spasms subsided, he felt his brother's hand on his shoulder. His spark threatened to clench, tiny pinpricks of pain waiting to become full on spears.

"How—how can you even stand the sight of me?"

"It wouldn't be fair to condemn you for something you can't even remember."

"And what if I do? What if I start to remember it, to recover what was lost? Will you hate me again?"

He felt a pain, sharper than his own, break through the link for a mere shadow of a moment.

"I never hated you, brother."


	7. Semblance

He sat on the tiles, watching the sluggish swirl of soupy sediment inching towards the drain. Every so often it would receive an added boost of fluid, pushing it further towards the grate, which was nearly clogged with sludge and bits of debris. All of it had come from him, flushed from the crevices beneath his armor and scrubbed off of the top. Decaying, stringy pieces of blackish carbon, the source of most of the stench, and heaps of mineral laced muck, all organic, all evidence to describe exactly what kind of planet they were on. The worst were the calcium deposits that had adhered themselves to nearly every available surface.

Those had taken a pressure hose on the highest setting to get the majority of them off, and even then, they left oddly shaped blotches on his armor that made his sensors itch.

He'd been let off the table and allowed time to ingest a cube of energon, before being taken into the medical washroom. Half carried, half staggered, half dragged. With his leg missing, he had to lean on his brother, but his size had caused an unbalance in Optimus's equilibrium. His brother had stumbled, and the medic had moved in to assist, though he could tell by the green mech's grip that he'd been reluctant to come near him with his limbs free.

He had tried desperately not to look at himself, afraid of what other changes there might have been to his frame. However, some things could not help but make themselves obvious, such as his size. He was a full meter larger, his frame adjusted to compensate for added mass. Exactly what kind of mass he wasn't certain, but given the evidence at the end of his own arm, he could hazard a guess. A short review of all his currently disabled subsystems confirmed his suspicions.

The list was far longer than he had expected.

He raised his gaze off the floor, turning towards his brother, ready to ask-but stopped.

Weaponry, inbuilt or otherwise, was meant to be used.

He had used them.

He had used them and one of his brother's greatest friends was dead because of it. And though by now he was positive that Jazz was not the only casualty, he couldn't wrap his processor around it.

Shuttering his optics, he fought to keep from twitching involuntarily as his brother moved on to clean another panel on his back. However, some of the cleaning fluid seeped down the wires dangling from his shoulder, stinging the ends. He winced, half raising arm off the floor to grab at it before gravity decided to remind him why he'd been bracing it against the floor. He started to fall back, but luckily Optimus moved in and grabbed his uninjured shoulder so he could regain his balance.

His brother pushed him back up, keeping a hand steady on his shoulder until he was once again propped up on his good arm.

"How many more have I killed?"

Optimus didn't answer right away, though the grip on his shoulder tightened imperceptibly. He knew it was the wrong question to have asked when the bond constricted, almost twisting shut again. A short wave of tangled emotions leaked through, so brief he couldn't decipher them all. He caught grief, guilt, and again that underlying anger that sent a chill through his neural network.

When the reply finally came, it was in a measured tone, unwavering, controlled.

"You don't want to know that."

"No," he agreed after a moment, bowing his head. "No, I don't."

Too many.

So many that enumeration was difficult, if not impossible.

His frame suddenly felt heavier, shoulders pulled down as if a weight greater than the adjustments that had already been inflicted to his armor had been placed there. He recalled the pain he'd felt break through the bond earlier, when he'd asked his brother if the recovery of his memories would make Optimus hate him.

His brother had never hated him.

He didn't doubt it. He'd felt anger and sadness through their link, suspicion and pain, but not one of those emotions held a single drop of hate. He wasn't certain that, if the situations had been reversed, he would feel the same.

Optimus was better than him; he'd known it for the longest time.

His brother was better at interacting with others, making friends easily, always managing to say all the right things. Empathy, the intellectual identification with the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Optimus was empathy personified, caring about everyone, no matter who it was, and responding in kind. He had, on occasion, been jealous of that trait, envy stemming from admiration.

He'd wanted to be like his elder sibling, had tried and failed to find anyone outside of his brother who'd wanted to interact outside of a professional basis that he could tolerate. Mainly those who wanted any interaction at all were femmes, pretending to listen, but all the while scheming. They'd desired him for his station, not for himself.

He knew his brother was victim to them as well, though it always hurt Optimus more when he discovered that each date was just another trap. He hated seeing and feeling his brother's disappointment after each attempt. He'd grown to hate official functions and ceremonies, and the socialite femmes that frequented them in the hopes of bedding either one of them.

Optimus always gave them the benefit of a doubt, whereas he had given up on it.

"How was your date?"

"What?"

He knew that the question had been abrupt and seemed to have developed completely out of nowhere, but right now he craved a semblance of normalcy. He wanted nothing more than to be back in Central Towers, back in their shared quarters, talking as if nothing bad had ever come between them.

"Your date," he repeated, glancing over his shoulder. "The one you painted yourself blue for. How did it go?"

Optimus stared at him for a moment, bewildered expression caught in the midst of overtaking a look of concentration. Apparently his brother had zoned out, focused on scraping the calcium deposits off one of his shoulder plates, as they had apparently resisted the pressure hose. The scrubber was still in hand, soap bubbles dripping off of it.

It seemed to take a few extra seconds for his brother's processor to analyze the question.

"She-she saw right through it," Optimus finally answered with a strange, almost amused sort of frown. "I...accidentally knocked over a table, and made a fool of myself...in short it was disastrous."

"I see," he murmured, surprised, for his brother was never so clumsy. When such rare occasions did happen to pop up, Optimus tended to become exponentially embarrassed. It was strange to hear about such a situation, yet not even a hint of embarrassment leaking through the bond. Then again, he'd brought up a subject more than a hundred thousand vorns old, so maybe it wasn't so surprising. "Sorry..."

Optimus chuckled and he felt a faint hint of amusement through their connection.

"You said that, when I came back and told you about it later that night. You also laughed and called me a glitch-head, if I recall correctly."

"Ah..."

"She asked me out again though, so it was alright."

"She did?"

"Yes."

There was silence as he let that information roll around in his processor for a moment, musing as Optimus picked up one of the other hoses to rinse off the panel that had just been finished. He examined the bond anew, and despite the fact that it wasn't as open or fully realized as he recalled it being, now that he knew what to search out he could feel the different textures that the link now held.

One separate string for each individual connection to his brother's spark.

Of the many, there were three that stood out against all of them, the most important ones. His own was easy to pick out, burning brightest only because it belonged to both of them. But as he felt out the other two his brother withdrew, pushing those threads out of his reach. It was a reflexive motion, snapping him back into the reality of the present and out of the brief semblance of what once had been.

He drew back from the bond as well, feeling a strange itch at the back of his optics and a sudden surge of...hatred for himself welling up. His actions had driven away the one whose opinion, whose approval, mattered to him the most.

Optimus's trust in him was broken and he knew with a concrete certainty that it was irreparable.

"What is her name?" he asked as he looked back at the drain, shoulders sagging. He didn't expect an answer, knowing the conversation had died off with his attempt at reaching further into his brother's spark. "You don't...you don't have to tell me, I just-"

"Elita. Her name is Elita."

He hesitated, uncertain if he should even attempt to press further for more information but then he felt his brother's spark reaching out. An apology for the reaction, for cutting the link so abruptly. He latched onto that, throwing open his own end of the bond, so that Optimus could view it freely, without hindrance.

Maybe if he kept it that way there would be a possibility of renewal. Not the same level of trust they'd had before, but even just a little bit would be better than none.

"And she's your spark mate now, isn't she?"

A pause, indecision through the link so brief it could have been his own.

"Yes."


	8. Sporadic Cognitivity

It had become abundantly clear when they had returned to the isolation room that there was to be some sort of major surgery. The tools were all laid out, and again that strange itch of recognition ran rampant in his processor. He knew that this particular set was for removing larger portions of armor and that such a procedure would require sedatives. Sure enough, as his brother helped him to the table he saw the syringe all prepped and ready to go.

He couldn't keep the tension out of his frame.

He didn't want to enter a forced recharge. His CPU's repair functions would run while he was offline, and the medic had never said the damage to his memory core was temporary. Right now, he didn't want any lost data to surface, whether it be good or bad.

Casting about for something else to think about, anything at all that would keep him from worrying, he looked back across the room at his brother.

"I'm taller."

"You were always taller," Optimus reminded him. He noticed the merest hint of a smile lying in wait at the edges of his brother's mouth. "You always rubbed it in too."

"But I was never this tall. This—I'm almost a full meter taller than Sentinel!"

He couldn't really miss his brother's stiffened posture or the strange twist in their link at the mention of their sire.

Shuttering his optics, he turned his head away as that stabbing pain welled up in his spark again. It was not enough to make it clench as it had before, which surprised him. The loss of their creator should have been one of the greater pains in his spark, but for some reason it seemed overshadowed.

He knew they hadn't always been on the best of terms, what with Sentinel's obsessive adherence to tradition constantly straining the relationship between all three of them. He and Optimus had been trying to change things ever since they'd been appointed to their offices, and the High Council was highly resistant. Nearly everything they submitted for review was rejected, stamped with the seal of the High Council Leader, Sentinel's seal.

He suddenly had the feeling that something must have occurred to drive him even further away from his sire, he just wasn't sure what it was.

The sound of the door sliding open kept him from pursuing that line of thought. The medic moved into the room, looking extremely annoyed. He was beginning to think that this look of massive irritation was the green mech's default expression.

He watched somewhat apprehensively as an IV line was set up, realizing that the contents of the syringe was simply the initial dose. His nervousness must have bled through the bond, for the next moment he found that Optimus had moved closer to the table. His brother placed a hand on his shoulder, an act of reassurance though it didn't really work. He'd rather remain awake, but he knew that arguing for lucidity was beyond his rights at the moment.

He gave Optimus a grateful glance anyways, then held out his arm for the medic to attach the IV line.

He turned his head away as it was attached to the main energon line in between his elbow and his wrist. The anesthesia wouldn't start flowing until the initial sedative was administered. There was a five second interval, during which he became uncomfortably aware that an IV needle with nothing flowing from it was rather unpleasant. The prick of the syringe directly into the main junction at the inside of his elbow took his attention away.

At least this time the injection site wasn't his neck.

This one acted fast, for just a few seconds later he could feel his systems slowing down. Despite his compliance with their administration, he tried to fight the sedatives, tried to stem their flow through his systems, tried to stay awake, tri _ed to run faster through the lower corridor without knocking anyone out of his way. This proved difficult, as everyone was headed in the same direction, the mass of bots clogging the hallway impeded any and all progress towards the front of the building. Nearer to the atrium, forward momentum halted altogether as nearly everyone had paused to stare out at the thick column of smoke rising up into the sky._

_He had heard the shockwave from the blast in his office, had felt Central Tower shake from it and the windows rattle. Initially he'd gone up to the roof to see what had caused it, optics drawn immediately to the left by the dust and debris thrown into the air by the explosion. The front half of the Senate Hall just a few blocks away had been entirely obscured, though whether it had simply collapsed or been incinerated was not immediately discernible._

_He could have flown that short distance, but as one in charge of most facets of the Aerial Defense Force he knew that Capitol Square would be a no fly zone for the foreseeable future._

_Instead he threaded his way through the crowd, taking almost too much time to reach the doors. The streets outside were equally crowded with bots fleeing from the immediate danger zone. Already the cloud of debris was sweeping through the streets, diffused somewhat by the buildings in its way but still thick enough to cause trouble for the optics._

_He followed in the wake of an emergency crew, though admittedly without a ground based alternate mode he was soon left behind. He kept walking, reaching out to his brother again through their bond to make certain he was still functioning. The response was a minor fla_ sh of confusion, followed quickly by concern. He tried to unshutter his optics, but they felt heavy and sluggish, unresponsive to the rest of his processor. He tried to move, but again there was no relevant reply from the systems responsible for controlling his limbs. He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't open and his vocalizer remained inactive. He was aware of movement around him, sounds, words, speech, all unintelligible and the feel of his brother's spark somewhere close by.

There were hands on his chassis, prying at his armor, and the awareness that it should have been painful. He attem _pted to locate his brother amidst the chaos that was now the area around the Senate Hall. The air was thick with filter clogging dust, making ventilation difficult and halving normal visual acuity. The debris on the ground made walking difficult, the only areas already cleared being used up by emergency workers and those few patients they had managed to drag clear of the rubble._

_He found his brother with one such group, closer to the more intact side of the building. Several members of the Elite Guard were huddled around, examining a holographic schematic of the Senate Hall, discussing how best to access the crushed interior. He moved up to stand next to Optimus, relieved to see physical proof that his brother had avoided injury. He noticed the grimly determined expression on his brother's face, however, and in an instant he knew that his elder sibling was planning on joining the Guard Members in their excursion into the rubble. Digging through broken steel girders and shredded concrete for survivors. He reached out and grabbed his brother's shoulder, gaining his attention._

_"You're not planning to go in there, are you?"_

_A redundant question, since he already knew the answer._

_Optimus didn't need a reason to help the injured, he just would. It didn't matter to him who they were or who they worked for, what mattered was that they needed help and that he was there to give it._

_He, however, needed a reason, any reason, as to why he shouldn't step in and stop his brother from risking injury in that unstable broken patchwork of rubble._

_"I was supposed to meet with Gridline for lunch," Optimus murmured quietly, face taking on an expression of stubborn determination. He'd known of the meeting of course, his brother was overseeing the construction of the new refineries in Kalis. Gridline, being the Senator for that particular sector, was involved in the project as well. "He didn't meet me out here as he said he would."_

_There was a pause and he saw his brother's optics dart downwards, a flash of guilt within them._

_"Dualpoint went in to see what was holding him up."_

_He couldn't keep the alarm from bleeding through the link, his hand tightening on his brother's shoulder as he turned his optics on the huddle of Guard Members. Sure enough he saw the blistering crimson and black armor of Blackjack standing within the group, holding onto the blueprint projector. There was a tension in her frame that wasn't usually present, the only evidence of worry for her missing spark mate._

_"I—"_

_"Don't."_

_"But I'm the one who asked him to—"_

_"Assign the blame where it belongs, Optimus, not on yourself."_

_"I'm still going in," his brother said quietly, raising his optics back up. "I'm not going to stand around here wai_ ting for them to try something else. They've been warned twice already, by myself and by Prowl."

"And you thought they'd actually listen?"

"Considering their inexperience in dealing with humans, I had hoped they would at the very least exercise some caution."

There was a derisive snort from somewhere over his head.

"I highly doubt that the word 'caution' is even programmed into their vocabularies, Prime."

"If they try something like this again—"

"Which, of course, they will."

"—they will be spending the next stellar cycle in the brig. I do not want this incident to da _mage our chances at getting the approval for the colony on Vegna Seven."_

_It wasn't Optimus speaking, he knew it before he even entered the office, but as always it threw him off-balance. They had a similar vocal structure, Sentinel and his brother; when they were younger Optimus could mimic their sire almost perfectly, something that had gotten them both into trouble on multiple occasions. Now, however, the similarity between their tones was an annoyance, especially when the former Prime was acting as if the world should simply forget what had occurred just three orns previous._

_Optimus was preparing for the memorial._

_Sentinel was preparing for a meeting._

_He was glaring when he walked through the door, optics narrowing on the elder mech and his current audience. He was met with Sentinel's own scowl and the startled, but annoyed look that Helix threw him as he entered the room. He didn't spare a glance for the sycophantic scientist, keeping all of his attention on his sire._

_"Holding a High Council session? With all of Iacon in mourning?" he snarled, not bothering to restrain the contempt he currently held for the former Prime. "Tell me you're joking."_

_Sentinel gave him a withering look._

_"I will not give pause in_ _**my** _ _duties because of the whims of a terrorist—"_

_"Duties? You want to speak of duties? How about honoring the fallen? Is that not the duty of those who survive them? You knew some of those that died, yet here I find you pretending as if their existence meant nothing!"_

_"Someone has to keep the cogs turning while you—"_

_"While I what?" he snapped, hands curling subconsciously into fists. "While I waste my time with out-dated ceremony? That's supposed to be my line, not yours."_

_"I am not argu_ ing with you, Ratchet. This isn't exactly something I suspected to find either."

The voice is muffled, behind the door again maybe. He tried to shift his limbs, but like before they aren't cooperating. He attem _pted to stand straighter, to pay attention to what was being said, but the words slipped passed his audio receivers without comprehension. He couldn't keep his gaze from straying to his right and the rosette femme standing at his brother's side. It was the first time he had seen the one whom Optimus had become so enamored of and, though they had yet to even be properly introduced, he couldn't help but wonder what his brother saw in her. She was pretty enough to be one of the many dolled up processor-less fan femmes, only the solemn expression on her face and the way she stood so rapt at attention hinted otherwise. The fact that she had so opportunely appeared right when they had walked into the courtyard had roused his suspicions, but—_

_She wasn't there just because Optimus was._

_The memorial was for those who had perished in the bombing of the Senate Hall and one of her friends had been lost in the attack. The fact that she now stood with his brother, close enough now that he could see that her hand was entwined with his, was mere coincidence._

_They had both lost someone._

_He looked away, back towards the front and wondered where this strange feeling of resentment was coming from._

_The first row was crowded, relatives of the deceased standing shoulder to shoulder. He could tell who belonged to the Elite Guard and who didn't by the way they stood, backs straightened and heads raised high._

_Vigilant even whilst mourning their own._

_He raised his gaze back to the dais and noted that the eulogist had yet to finish speaking. In fact, it appeared that he was just now getting to the good part, optics blazing as he preached some ancient babble about the will of Primus. His optics narrowed, never having liked listening to such blithely contrived religious dribble; his dislike always expanded to whoever was spouting it as well._

_His optics fell on those standing on the opposite side, and felt an imperceptible chill run down his spinal column. He had known ahead of time, of course, that Dualpoint's eldest greatly resembled the gunner, but no amount of warning could have prepared him properly. The mech was the same size, had the same armor configuration, and even the same deadpan glower that he'd come to associate with his brother's late bodyguard._

_There were only two things visibly, that set him off from his sire._

_While Dualpoint had sported several different shades of grey and grayish blues, this mech was jet black. His posture differed, shoulders squared and held in a certain way, not because of the mech's disposition but to counterbalance the massive cannons attached to his forearms. The bot's head wasn't held up in pride like the rest of those belonging to the Elite Guard, but instead centered, gaze held steady on the dais._

_Or more specifically, on the holo screen as it cycled through images of those that had perished._

_He watched that mech for a long moment, then shifted his stare to the ones standing on either side, Dualpoint's other progeny. Dark grey and dull red on the right, with scars marring the armor, all hinting at a job that allowed little time for cosmetic maintenance. This mech's features weren't as hard, with more of a resemblance to Blackjack and less of a natural scowl. The youngling, however, looked out of place standing with his elder siblings, gleaming red armor a testament to a recent frame upgrade. The little bot held the same solemn yet grumpy expression as the others, a reminder that they were related no matter what their differences._

_He wondered if others saw such similarities between himself and Optimus, or if his decision to take on a Seeker's build as his final frameset had dissipated any likenesses that they had shared._

_He cast his gaze downwards, staring unthinkingly at his ha_ nd. He didn't know when his optics had come online or what had triggered the transition from memory to reality. His perception simply warped from vertical to horizontal, his fingers morphing from their normal structure to strange nightmarish cla _ws, clenching reflexively over the now open and bleeding lines in his shoulder. He growled, the feel of his own energon dripping down his arms infuriated him to no end. His optics narrowed and he brought his other hand up, raking across the armor of the mech responsible, ripping, shredding, pulling, tearing to get at the circuitry beneath. The bot fought back, cursing and spitting and raging until he managed to tear through the chest, closing his claws over the mech's spark chamber, and, with one movement, je_ rked his arm off the table, snatching at air. Only he didn't grab air, his hand instead hit something solid, something that resisted his grip. His optics snapped onto it in an instant, locking onto the medic. There was an expression there, an uneven mix of terrified surprise, but he couldn't seem to keep his vision from losing focus. He felt a wave of alarm emanating from elsewhere in the room, but his brother hadn't moved fast enough.

He could kill the medic.

He coughed, once, twice, tightening his grip on the reflective green mech with each strained exhalation of air through vents near effusing to cooperate. He yanked the bot closer to the table with one movement, forcing his optics to focus, jaw tightening as he felt the nausea rise up again.

"Take them out."

"What?"

"M—my weapons systems," he hissed through gritted dental plates. "Take them out."

The medic stared down at him, agape, optics slowly widening. The bot looked for a moment as if he was at a loss for how to respond, and then seemed to recover, mouth clamping quickly shut, that look of insufferable grouchiness returning in an instant.

"I'll need my arm back then."

He blinked, fingers loosening enough that the green mech could pull his arm out of the way. There were dents, no, gouges in the armor of the medic's upper arm and a small trickle of energon dripping down into the elbow joint, some of which had gotten on his fingertips.

He lowered his hand from view, shifting back so that both his shoulders were flat against the table. Blue and red shifted in the corner of his optics, his brother moving in closer, concern flooding their link now, though he knew it wasn't for him. He felt a surge of guilt for having lashed out, followed swiftly by a feeling of cold numbness in his circuits.

He couldn't move again.

The medic let out a loud curse, though his audio sensors interpreted it as slightly muddled, as if the world had suddenly fallen away. He felt a ru _sh of dizziness pass through his processor, deleting any trace of a logical thought process. He stared down at the energon cube in his hands, and wondered briefly through the pleasant buzz now burning through his systems how it had managed to become empty so damnably fast. He blinked, trying to rid the strange new blur his optics seemed to have acquired, but succeeded in only making his vision temporarily double._

_Deciding that he had probably had enough took approximately three seconds longer than it should have, and when he went to set the now empty cube down he missed the end table entirely._

_He stared at the floor and the little shards of glass now covering it._

_For some reason he suddenly felt sullen, though it took a breem of zoning out for anything else to register within his CPU. Eventually, however, he raised his head up and looked around at the empty room. It wasn't part of the common area that he shared with his brother, but the smaller private quarter attached to his offices. He would have, should have been in the apartments, slagging his processor with Optimus and his friends, reminiscing on that one time when Dualpoint had taken on a Feral unarmed or when Blackjack had caught Jazz sneaking into the femme locker rooms in the Elite Guard Headquarters._

_That had been the plan, but plans had a way of going awry._

_He'd been accosted by one of the fan femmes upon leaving the Mausoleum, the dolled up little mint green bot gushing faux sympathy. Her offers, though refused at every turn, had delayed him long enough that by the time he'd been rid of her, his brother had already started back towards Central Tower. He had caught a glimpse of him from the steps, the rosette femme at his side, and had felt an inexplicable sadness grip his spark._

_It was the sudden thought that his brother wouldn't need him anymore that had driven him to open up a case of high grade all by himself. And by the looks of the many empty cubes littering the end tables, he had emptied more than half of the entire case. He glanced back at the broken cube on the floor for a moment, thinking briefly that he should have accepted that femme's invitation, if only for something to do other than downing more high grade. He shook his head, stopped as the dizziness washed over him again, then made the monumentally challenging decision to get to his feet._

_His limbs proved to be altogether uncooperative on the first try and failed halfway through the second, depositing him back on the couch with a muffled thud. The third attempt, however, was successful, although he did feel a little off balanced by the way the room seemed to be tilting. After a moment of swaying in place trying to regain a sense of equilibrium, he staggered over towards the door, taking an exaggerated amount of care not to step on the broken glass. He made it to the wall, which kept him from falling completely over and served as a bit of a guide in orienting himself towards the door frame._

_Shuffling forward, the door opened with a hiss before he was even close enough to have triggered the sensors. He blinked in surprise, staring straight ahead at the empty air, trying to figure out why it had moved of it's own accord._

" _Is sir alright?"_

_It took a few seconds for the words to compute, and even longer for him to process the notion of orienting his gaze downwards._

_There was the downcast courier, a small stack of data pads clutched tightly to her chest, staring up at him with a look of apprehension. She looked ready to bolt at the slightest movement, trembling in terror, although that could have simply been the high grade messing with his visual centers again. For some reason, her optics seemed to be overly bright._

" _Sir?"_

_Wordlessly, he held out his hand for the data pads as he let his optics wander over the rest of her frame. He wasn't sure if it was the high grade that was making her scuffed blue armor seem appetizing, or if she really was somehow attractive. As she unfolded her arms from around the data pads to hand them over, his optics fell on the registry symbols carved into the right side of her jaw. He felt a strange twisting sensation somewhere between his fuel tank and his spark, his sluggish processor interpreting it as something akin to nausea._

_Had to be the high grade, if he was considering a downcast for a temporary addition to his berth._

_He took the data pads, glancing over them to find Sentinel's cramped signatures in the bottom corner of them both. A surge of annoyance prompted him to toss them both to the floor, a startled gasp issuing forth from the courier. He didn't look back at her, instead turned and lurched back towards the couch. It was only when he was halfway there that he realized that with the wall no longer acting as a support he could no longer properly maintain his balance._

" _Sir!"_

_He didn't fall completely forward, at least not right away, which was a surprise of mild proportions. When his visual centers had realigned themselves and the room had ceased to spin so violently, he found himself leaning heavily on the downcast femme. She had somehow managed to get between him and the floor, struggling to keep him upright. Somewhere at the back of his processor, he realized that he probably should have done something to prevent gravity from staking its claim._

_By the time that thought had managed to make itself coherent enough for his limbs to cooperate, they were already on the ground._

_He briefly attempted to push himself up, but failed to coordinate his efforts, managing only to shift sideways just a little bit. His processors went partially incoherent after that, refusing to focus as the contents of his last cube of high grade decided to kick in. He was vaguely aware of the courier, pinned by his unresponsive frame to the floor. It took far longer for him to realize that she wasn't trying to free herself, and even more time passed before the question of why wound its way into his processor._

_He had passed on into recharge before an answer could be formulated._


	9. Reactant

_It was the sound of vents hitching and sputtering, vents that were not his own, that roused him. He activated his optics only to snap them shut again as the light stabbed at the lenses of his visual centers. A dull pain at the back of his processor became just a little bit sharper, and a relatively familiar ache it was. His systems, having finished processing the obscene amount of high grade he had downed the previous night, were now complaining about the abuse._

_He groaned, pushing against the floor to flop over on his back. Again the light attacked his optics as they were unshuttered, but instead of wrenching them shut again he kept them halfway open so that they could adjust. It took longer than normal, like the pain, oversensitive visual sensors were an unpleasant after effect of overcharged systems. He stared up at the off-white ceiling, waiting for them to adapt, listening to air being cycled through a ventilation system that sounded as if it were either clogged or forcibly closed off._

_After a moment, he slowly turned his head to the side._

_Lying on the ground next to him, unmoving save for the occasional shudder as her vents struggled to cycle air, was the slim form of the downcast courier. Her dull blue armor could have blended in with the floor if not for the multiple scuff marks and dents marring every visible surface. Her right leg, the one closest to him, was twisted, the socket popped out of place. In the space where the joint was supposed to be attached he could see the tangle of wires and energon lines leading up to one of the main junctions just above her hip._

_An out of place joint had to be painful, and he felt a twinge of guilt at having caused it. However, when he went to prop himself up to peer at her face what he saw made an icy cold feeling crawl through his systems._

_She was staring upwards, optics open wide though the pale blue light burning within them was unfocused, and her facial plating was frozen._

_This, coupled with the sound her vents were making, force fed a creeping, disturbing thought into his processor, an answer to the query of her stillness._

_Paralysis he had witnessed before, mainly in Aerial Force recruits who managed to crash first flight out, wings wrenched from their bodily structure, spinal column partially displaced. These were repairable injuries, always physical, always something to laugh off over high grade afterwards. But he had never seen paralysis stemming from an inability of the CPU to even process the surrounding world. Overruled by emotion rather than pain, the limbs of the body were unable to respond to even the most basic of commands._

_She was unmoving, paralyzed by something as simple as fear._

_He pushed himself up further, optics still on the tiny femme. Even his sudden movement didn't break whatever hold terror had on her processor. He let his gaze drift back down to her displaced hip, though the dents in the thinner armor of her abdomen quickly drew his attention away. The scrapes and gouges that were spread so sporadically over the rest of her frame became an interlaced network of pockmarked metal the lower his optics traversed. There was no trace of her original paint on these plates, nor any indication that repairs had even been attempted, save for a few traces of unhealed solder._

_None of the damage was fresh, for which he felt a twisted sense of relief flood through him._

_He was only indirectly responsible for her current state._

_He shifted, reaching forward only to pause, hand halfway outstretched as indecisiveness seized hold of him. His optics flicked back up to her face, the symbols etched there standing out starkly in the light, though now that he had a better chance to look at them he could see just how hastily done the engraving had been. Not that he had expected it to be quality work, not when the bot at hand was a downcast, but there was evidence of additional scarring around the edges as if the engraver hadn't been overly zealous with his tools._

_He knew of downcasts, the reasons behind their creation and their continued existence in mainstream society. Centuries ago during the reign of Nova Prime, when all support for the Halicon Penitentiary on Cybertron's secondary moon had been pulled, the continued problem of what to do with the dregs of society reared it's ugly head. The constructs in Kaon were not large enough to hold the ever burgeoning ranks of those who chose to disobey the law. Someone whose name was but a footnote in history had suggested taking the worst of the worst, the murderers, the rapists, those that persisted down the lines of physical abuse, and molding them into workers, to serve the society they had wronged._

_This measure, once put forth, was readily accepted._

_Hoards of prisoners were taken out, their memory cores erased and their base programming edited to favor docility. Their faces marked, they were assigned to jobs too complicated for drones but still far too menial for ordinary laborers. It soon became public knowledge where they had originated, and the stigmas of their past lives caused many to be killed outright, beaten and broken for crimes they didn't even remember committing. Restricted from retaliation or even basic self defense, most of them did not survive even a vorn after reprogramming._

_Femme downcasts were few and far between, as most violent crimes were committed by mechs and those that did meet the criteria were often sold as pleasure-bots to the highest bidder._

_He didn't really know if the little courier had been lucky enough to have escaped that fate, though judging by the arrangement of the half healed injuries on her chassis she seemed to have it worse. As he stared at her, he couldn't help but wonder what she had done to have been sentenced to this fate. She seemed far too small, far too weak to be capable of committing any of the atrocities that other holders of the title had meted out._

_He looked back at her leg, hesitating._

_It was such simple thing to do, to pop the joint back into its proper place; it wouldn't take any longer than a few seconds at the very most._

_His brother would have done it already, would not have just sat there staring, always giving help when needed even when he wasn't asked to. Optimus would have done everything he could to make her fear dissipate, would have gained her trust simply through his ability to understand the situation. His brother would have done the right thing, no hesitation, no second thoughts._

_It was in thinking this more than anything that he finally forced his limbs to cooperate._

_He slid his hand beneath her leg, trying not to jar it too much in the process. Her upper thigh didn't even span the entire width of his palm, the armor covering it laughably thin. He tried not to grip too hard as he pushed the joint back into place, but still found that the metal had buckled somewhat as he pulled his hand away._

_The sputtering of her vents increased and he snapped his gaze back to her face only to note a subtle shift in her entire frame. The strange unnatural tightening of the limbs usually associated with paralysis had disappeared, replaced by a limpness that did nothing to relieve his current feeling of unease regarding her presence. Her optics were no longer forced open so wide, he could see that her gaze while still untraceable was at least somewhat focused and her facial plates were no longer pulled taught but had slackened into an almost emotionless state. It was if she had immediately slipped into a default mode of functioning upon the lifting of the paralysis, refusing to acknowledge that she now had use of her limbs._

_He frowned, sitting back as he tried to puzzle through this with the ache of a hangover pounding at the back of his own processor._

_The icy cold feeling in his circuits returned when it the realization finally came._

_Willful inaction brought on by learned expectations, the mere thought of how such a reaction was forged sent a churning nausea through his fuel tank. He looked away, a strange mix of emotions prickling around the edges of everything, confusing and frustrating his aching CPU. He grit his dental plates, grinding them together before making the decision to climb slowly to his feet. He looked back down at her, again feeling that strange static enveloping his systems at the sight of her frame._

_She looked far smaller from this angle, the contrast between the raw metal scrapes across her armor and the dull blue of her paint standing out far greater in the light than before. He saw her optics flicker, slowly turning to gaze up at him, uncertainty and worry underlining the fear that shone through._

_He locked gazes with her, reaching a sudden conclusion in his processor._

_"I am not going to hurt you like that."_


	10. Syntax Error

He wondered idly, as the sedatives began releasing their hold on his systems, why a moment shrouded with the after effects of high grade would have survived long enough to be ingrained in his processor, let alone still be intact after the corruption of his memory core. He was distracted from this particular line of thought as he onlined completely, yet another set of warnings flashing across his CPU. They declared that he was now missing the armor over his chest, though somehow this didn't surprise him as much as it should have.

Glancing about, he found that the operating lights were running at half capacity, pulled back away from the table and shoved closer to the wall. It made the shadows in the room a little less sharp, blurred and distorted by the decrease in intensity.

In the corner, sitting in a haphazard pile upon another table, were his missing chest plates.

They looked to be even more of a mess than he recalled when they had been attached, but then again it could have been from how they had been stacked. The charred and twisted edges looked much worse with the way the shadows fell on them. They didn't really look as if they had been a part of his body at all.

Hesitantly, he raised his hand up to where the armor should have been, carefully feeling along the edges of the now open cavity. Rougher textures prevailed under his fingers, indicating that the metal had been far too warped to simply detach by itself. The vast majority of the sensors along each edge were dead, burned out and unresponsive to his prodding, so when he finally ran across a live one it sent a sudden sharp shock over his neural network.

His jaw clenched, fighting back a vocal response to the pain as he snapped his hand away from that particular section. He waited a moment, cycling air through his vents until the sensation faded, taking that fractional amount of time to brace himself mentally.

After a few seconds, he slowly lifted his head from the berth.

His optics went first to focus on the edges, the rough cut metal confirming what he'd felt out with his fingers. They weren't as jagged to the visual as they had been to the tactile. He raised his hand back to his chest, tracing over the one area of his under-plating within the range of his current gaze that did not bear signs of scarring. He lingered, staring at that plate for the longest moment, wondering why it alone had escaped damage. It didn't appear to be a vital spot or even very important in the overall structure of his frame, although the curvature of the metal was somewhat odd considering its placement. The under-plating attached to and just beneath the spark chamber was supposed to be flatter, covering those systems related to the processing of energon.

He frowned, craning his head forward. With the lights no longer positioned directly over his berth, the shadows made it difficult to follow where the metal dipped down. But all the plates next to it, though damaged, followed the same curving pattern all around the bottom of his spark chamber. This left a small area of open space, encased in the thinner sheets of metal that made up his under-plating, right where his fuel tank should have been.

For a moment he sat simply staring, bewildered.

A quick run through of his basic systems confirmed that his fuel tank and all connected processes were all accounted for, working at slightly less than peak efficiency. Their relative positioning had simply been shifted about, rearranged to form a space that appeared to serve no purpose. He was distracted from doing a full system search for its function by the sound of the door opening.

He turned his head in time to see Optimus walk in and caught a brief look at the chamber beyond his brother's frame. He spotted a mech with grey and green armor sitting on one of the berths at the far end and the reflective fluorescent hue of the medic before the door snapped shut again. It seemed that he wasn't the only patient in the med bay that particular orn.

He transferred his gaze back to his brother and saw that once again Optimus was wearing that patented expression of neutrality. Through the bond he caught a faint whiff of worry tangled up with confusion, and a weary sensation of contemplation. He knew that whatever thoughts were running rampant in his brother's processor, causing that worry, that confusion, were there due to his presence on the base.

It made a fresh surge of shame wash through his systems.

When Wraithfire had passed the office of Protectorate to him, Optimus had already been Prime for quite some time. He had done everything in his power to keep from causing his brother any more difficulties than what the position had already heaped on him. They had helped each other, trying to gain favor with the more senior senators who were quite unused to change. Senators who more often than not listened to what their sire had to say rather than either of them, even though technically they had the final word.

They had learned the hard way the difference between technicalities and actualities.

He went to sit up, remembering just how off balance he currently was due to his missing limbs just in time to catch himself from rolling off the table. A hand on his shoulder helped him to a steadier position, and he threw Optimus a grateful glance only to frown when he saw that his brother was pointedly avoiding his gaze. He started to say something, but faltered, turning his head away.

After a moment's silence, he raised his hand back up to his chest, just barely setting his fingers against the cavity's lower edges.

"What is this?"

He felt a flash of surprise pass briefly over their bond and saw an expression of uncertainty overtake his brother's face. Apparently this hadn't been the expected query, which led him to think that the answer should have been obvious. He looked away, lowering his gaze back over his chest. He noticed now that even the walls of his spark chamber hadn't escaped the damage that had been inflicted on his chest plates. The metal surface was charred, and in some places still contorted, though his repair systems had nearly finished fixing where it had been melted through. From this angle the small space beneath it looked smaller, less of cavity and more like a simple pocket within his armor.

He heard his brother sigh almost wearily, and looked up in time to see Optimus slowly shaking his head. A sense of discomfort slipped through, as if the presented topic was something his brother did not like, did not _**want**_ , to think about.

"That is a carrying hold," Optimus murmured after a long moment, the level of disquiet leaking through their bond rising as the words were spoken. With it came a swirl of disbelief, though he wasn't sure if it was his brother's or his own. "You have a carrying hold."

He stared at Optimus as those words wound their way through his processor, the question of why such a statement was voiced in a way that made it out to be terrible getting stuck in his throat as the implication of it suddenly hit home.

A carrying hold only developed under a certain set of circumstances, the programming for it to form activated if the correct criteria was met. It required two sparks, a mech's and a femme's, bound together, each one exactly one half of the other, and a merger between them strong enough to cause one to splinter. The creation of a sparkling, in other words, spurred the creation of the hold within each of its creators. Internals reorganized to form a space designed specifically to cradle, and comfort, and care for that new life.

"But—but I'm not—I never—"

He stopped, optics darting back and forth in tune to the thoughts now running rampant in his processor.

Focusing on his own spark, he sought out the individual connections to it. His brother's was burning brightest at the moment, newly reinitialized and bolstered by Optimus's immediate proximity. Next to it all the other links were so pallid, frayed and tangled at having been shoved back, that he was afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to decipher whom they had belonged to.

Past tense, because all those threads were either dead or disconnected from disuse.

At first he didn't think to look beyond them, automatically drawing to the conclusion that those tangled lines were all that was there, but an itch at the back of his processor made him search through them again.

There, buried deep beneath the dead connections, pulled back so that any who were connected to his spark could not detect them without alerting him to their investigation, were two threads. He pulled them back into range, trying to feel out where they connected to.

What he got was an indescribable emptiness.

He cast his optics up towards the ceiling as a wave of nausea ripped through him, pre-empting the pain in his spark by a mere half a second. He couldn't keep down the compulsion to purge his tank, barely able to turn over the side of the table so his half-processed energon wouldn't get all over his opened chest. The dry heaves hit once his tank was empty, coinciding with every wave of pain inside his spark.

"They're dead—I can't—I can't feel them," he whispered, once the convulsions had subsided enough for his vocal processor to work. His brother hadn't moved from where he'd been standing, expression having remained unchanged as well. Their link had withdrawn a bit, guarding Optimus's thoughts. Worry hit then, followed swiftly by the sharp tang of fear. "I—"

He coughed, a broken image of a faceless blue armored femme flickering through his processor, screaming as his claws tore open her chassis, ripping out not her spark but the sparkling that had been curled up inside her hold.

Shuddering, he shuttered his optics.

"I didn't—Oh Primus, please tell me I didn't kill them too."

"I don't know."

He lifted his head off the side of the table, optics snapping open again.

"You—I didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Why! You're my brother, why wouldn't I tell you!?" he asked, feeling a strange kind of panic begin to well up in his systems. "You told me about yours, even before she was your spark mate I knew about her! Why would I hide my own from you!?"

" _ **I don't know!**_ "

He froze upon hearing the tone in his brother's voice. That underlying anger he'd sensed when he'd first come online those few orns ago had returned, tainting the words.

"I don't know _**why**_ you didn't tell me, Megatron," Optimus stated, and he noted that one of his brother's hands had curled itself into a fist. "I haven't known _**why**_ you've done things in a very long time."

He wasn't certain if it was the implications of the last statement or the way his brother had said his name that caused the sharp, needle-like pains to dig into his spark once more. Without a word, he turned away, falling onto the berth again, his back turned towards Optimus. His arm fell over the side of the table, those hellish claws that had once been his fingers dangling just on the edge of his vision. He flexed them, optics drifting to the floor and the crooked shadows that they made across the tile. An array of thoughts churned their way through his processor.

Slowly, one digit at a time, he formed his hand into a fist.

"Why am I still alive?" he asked in a low voice, seemingly to himself. "If my spark mate is dead, I should be too."

"I don't know."

"You don't know a lot of things, brother."

"I know enough," Optimus retorted, a very small amount of defiance leaking through their connection. "You brought this on yourself, Megatron."

"By killing Jazz?"

"By killing—"

There was a sharp pause, a short, tempered silence.

"You're trying to provoke me."

"If that's the only way to get you to explain things, then so be it."

"I told you before, brother," Optimus sighed. He could hear his elder sibling shifting about on his feet, discomfort with the conversation causing the blue and red mech to fidget. A nervous habit from their youngling days that had since disappeared save for extremely rare occasions. "You don't want me to explain."

"Oh, but I do," he murmured, raising his gaze back to the table where the remains of his chest plates still sat. "I remember walking back into the hall that night-the night you had your date. And then suddenly I'm here, every warning system in my processor shrieking, every sensor screaming in agony—and I don't know why."

He raised his fist up in front of his face, optics narrowing on the ends of each claw, noting that there were gouges in the metal of his palm and wrist. Well worn gouges, the tips of each sharpened claw fitting neatly into them.

"I don't why—why my voice is changed—why my optics are different—why my armor is burnt through."

He shuttered his optics, letting his hand fall back down.

"And what little you have told me—that I killed Jazz and Sentinel—our sire? That they're not the only ones—what am I supposed to think of myself now, Optimus? I don't even know why I killed them."

The silence that followed his words was far too thick, far too choking for him to stand. It made him feel all the worse, guilt welling up for playing on his brother's inherent sense of empathy. He shifted, opening is mouth to break the quiet, to say something, anything to keep Optimus from speaking only to find himself too late as his sibling's voice cut through the air.

"Sentinel discovered that you were in league with the dissidents, the ones that bombed the Senate Hall," his brother said, as if it were flat fact, something long known but seldom referenced. "That is why you killed him."

"What?"

"You heard me, I'm not repeating it."

"I'm not—I was never—why would I be league with _**them**_!" he spat out, wrenching himself back up to face his brother. Despite everything, he couldn't help but feel somewhat insulted by this information, especially with the memory of that particular incident relatively fresh in his processor. "They killed Blackjack and Dualpoint, or did you forget that! Just because I chose to join the Aerial Force rather than follow you through the Elite Guard doesn't mean I completely disregarded the fact that they practically raised us—"

"You—"

"—just because I never got along well with Sentinel—"

"Megatron—"

"—he's the one that kept the senate from approving any of our proposals—"

"WILL YOU BE QUIET!"

He froze, more from the snappish way the words were spewed out than the actual command itself. He raised his optics to find that his brother's face currently held a vexed expression, though there was a mixture of frustrated bewilderment in his optics.

"You weren't working with the dissidents?"

"No!"

Optimus stared at him, calculating. He could feel his brother testing his own emotions through their bond, trying to discern whether or not he was lying. He let his end of the connection flow freely, hoping to be believed but not daring to assume that he would be. After a moment, his brother's frowned deepened, arms raising up to fold over his chest, face full of troubled contemplation.

"Then I am afraid that returns us to square one," Optimus murmured, looking down at the floor. "As I can think of no other relevant reason for such a deed."

"Couldn't of been because he was fragging bastard now, could it?"

This comment earned him a very impatient look.

"I can't think of any reason either, Optimus," he muttered, looking away. "None of this makes any sense at all to me—how could you think that I'd work with those—those scum?"

"Because you did."

"I just said—"

"Maybe not then, but somewhere along the line, they did start answering to you," his brother said, still looking at the floor. There was a slight strain in Optimus's voice at this point, as if such memories were something he was not used to reviewing, let alone relaying into spoken words. "It wasn't long after you killed Sentinel, after you were sentenced for killing him—the undercover agents for the Elite Guard, found so many reference to you, to the Stockades in Kaon—we just assumed..."

He felt a cold sensation well up in the pit of his internals, flooding through his energon lines as his thoughts funneled themselves down a certain corridor, corralled to formulate a single icy theory in his processor.

"Stop."

"You wanted to know, brother."

"I've heard enough."

Optimus finally looked at him, meeting his gaze with those burning blue optics, a glint of uncertainty inside their light. He stared at them for as long as he could before raising his hand up to cover his face, forcing back his revulsion at their shape in order to break his gaze away. Again he turned, rolling over on the berth and wrenching his optics shut, jaw clenching. He heard his brother move after a moment, heavy footsteps across the floor, the sound of the door sliding open and shut again, and the silence beyond fading away.


	11. Refraction

The wall had not changed in the long expanse of time he had spent looking at it. For the past several joors it had remained the same expanse of blank white paint that it had the very first time he'd actually gotten a good look at the room. There were no minor scuff marks or partial imperfections that might have tricked weary visual sensors into seeing something that wasn't really there. Even the shadows cast by the tables and the berth did little to lend it any descriptivity.

It was as clean as it could possibly be.

Clean like the upper tiers of Iacon, though those towers were made of metal rather than a hardened mixture of granite and sand with cohesive properties. Somewhere around the second joor he had decided to actually scan the wall itself only to be surprised that its make-up was not exactly ideal. The internal framework was metal, certainly, but the fill in material was not something his processor normally associated with the words 'structurally sound'. He had quickly reached the conclusion that the planet they were situated on did not have the over abundance of metal that Cybertron itself was composed of. In fact, its lack of it had forced whatever native species had developed to use something as crude and boring as stone for a building structure.

His optics began to wander, first upwards at the ceiling though this did little to hold his attention. It was only slightly more interesting than the wall, though it adhered to the same color scheme. Mounted directly in the middle was a round and altogether nondescript light fixture, currently turned on as the medic had taken away the operating lamps sometime earlier.

He hadn't noted the exact time, just the change in light quality. That the room had a permanent light source had been a mild surprise.

The cameras, on the other hand, he'd been expecting.

They were in the corners, staring down at the room below in an almost unobtrusive sort of way. He almost hadn't noticed them, at first thinking that the little reflective domes containing them were something integral to the medical bay. However, his systems had repaired themselves enough that his proximity sensors were able to pick up on the devices themselves. He had to admit, hiding security cameras behind a convex mirror was a rather clever idea, though he hadn't stared at them for long. His reflection, even distorted in that curved surface, caused an uncomfortable feeling itching through his chassis.

He glanced at the door, but it was only for a moment. Even if it did open, he did not want nor expect anything good to come out of any further visits from the medic or his brother. Speaking with the former was decidedly one-sided, despite the fact that he was the one doing what little talking there was. The reflective green mech had an intangible aura of grouchiness that seemed to deflect conversation prior to there actually being one.

As for the latter option, Optimus had yet to return after their last discussion and while he did not know exactly how long ago that was, he sensed that it was more than an orn or two.

He wasn't entirely certain if he wanted his brother to even come back.

There was a cube of energon on the table next to him. It had been sitting there for a while, but though his tank was sending complaints every few breems, he refused to even touch it. He knew that it would go to waste should he ingest it, for every so often his thoughts would stray away from his pointed attempts at distraction and his processor would cycle through the internal questioning he had been attempting to avoid.

They flowed freely now, aided by the scattered lines of thought brought on by exhaustion and lack of fuel. He had forced himself to stay awake, refusing to recharge though his system's demands for it had increased and increased until now the warnings were merely a few breems apart from each other. He knew that eventually he would crash, that his systems would shut down anyways, as one could only go so long without running their defragmentation routines. In his damaged state, those programs that only ran whilst in recharge would be supplemented by his repair systems, working away to fix the damage within his memory core.

He didn't want it fixed.

He didn't want to remember.

He didn't want to know, would rather his CPU be rendered unsalvageable, than to recall exactly what he had done to have broken every connection inside his spark save for his brother's. For the first time in what he could accurately recall, he felt afraid of himself, afraid of regressing into whatever it was he had become.

Yet there was indecisiveness at the back of his processor, a small desire for a certain set of data to be reintegrated.

He wanted it fixed.

He wanted to remember.

He wanted to know, to have some inkling of what _**she**_ was like.

When he had first taken office there had been a multitude of ceremonies and official parties that had occupied his time until he managed to figure out that attendance was not mandatory. These frivolous political gatherings, set up by the senators and the guild leaders, had merely been the first set of their ploys to get in his favor. He had fallen for it, mainly because he was young and like any typical mech thought more with his connection cables than his processor.

His first real foray into the realm of intimacy had gone by the name of Brushfire. Her sire had been the representative from Praxus for several vorns at that time, but had fallen out of favor with the rest of the senate due to some minor disagreements over inter-sector transit. So in true political fashion, she had been sicced on him, and for a short while he had been ensnared. She was delectable to look at, but as it turned out her looks were the only positive attribute that could be accurately labeled.

He had discovered, after the first initial drunken romp, that she was fairly lightweight between the audial sensors. It had been a learning experience for him, to realize that every femme he met on political grounds would trade themselves for the mere promise of a favor.

Snapside had been different, in that she had completely ignored him at first. It had been such a shock after so many of the others flocking about him, after going so long at being able to get practically any femme he wanted into his berth without much effort, that he had made it his mission to go after her. In the process of pursuing her, he had become overly smitten, nearly convincing himself that it was more than infatuation.

They had been exclusive for nearly two vorns when he'd discovered that she was sharing her berth with someone other than him.

As far as his memory currently stretched, those had been the only two major relationships he could recall and neither of them seemed to be likely candidates. There had been others, certainly, but none of them had left as much of an impact. Far more likely that he had met someone else within the span of time he was missing from his memory core.

He shuttered his optics, attempting to imagine a face he couldn't recall. Unwillingly, images less pleasant bled through, that pleading, screaming, weeping blue femme, a jolting reminder of why he didn't truly wish to remember. He wasn't sure if the armor his claws had torn through had belonged to his spark mate, or if the frightened sparkling he had ripped from her was his own.

He didn't want to know.

He didn't want to remember.

He didn't want it fixed


	12. Temporal Isolation

_"He has your optics."_

He snapped awake, the voice still echoing inside his processor even as several subsystems made clear their protest at the sudden transition back into consciousness. Though without his internal chronometer he could not tell how long he had been out, it felt as if he had only drifted off for a few breems. Just long enough for the light sensors within his visual centers to reset. He blinked several times, gaze shifting about the room as they readjusted themselves, though he hardly paid attention.

That brief throwback, completely unfocused save for the audio, had sent his processors racing off on different tangents. It was such a soft tone, almost but not quite to the point of being whispered, with a joyful lilt on the end.

The speaker had been smiling.

He played it over and over, that one snatch of a moment, a slow forming smile overtaking his face. It faded slightly when he tried to conjure up a face to match the voice and only the image of that screaming, pleading, begging femme floated to the surface. After a few moments of trying to banish her from his processor, he relented and allowed that flash nightmare to play across his mind. Her shouts, her begging, did not match the tonal structure of the half remembered voice, and for this he felt an immense amount of relief.

The blue femme was not his spark mate.

The sparkling his claws had ripped from her was not his.

It was then that he noticed that the room had darkened considerably in the short time he'd drifted into recharge. He frowned, casting his gaze about the room once more, finally noting the lack of a light switch on the walls. Apparently the lights were set on a timer, dimming to match the cycle of the planet itself. He hadn't noticed it before, thrown off by the operating lights that had glared on him for the vast majority of the time he'd been awake. Their removal left just the darkened lamp mounted on the ceiling.

The only illumination now was the sharp red glow of his own optics.

He had tried to dial them back to their original color, but the settings were locked in place. He didn't remember when he had decided to change them, and so could not figure out the sequence to unlock them. He knew he could probably ask the medic to reset them, but he managed to keep that temptation in check. He didn't want to deal with the reflective green mech any more than was necessary, a sentiment that he was quite certain to be mutual.

The hue of his optics seemed such a minor item before, though now, with those faint words echoing about his processor, he wondered if he had been foolish to dismiss their color so quickly.

_He has your optics._

"He has my optics," he murmured, nearly inaudibly, knowing with a strange kind of certainty that the statement was describing his sparkling, his son. He stared up at the darkened ceiling, marveling slightly at the thought. " _He_ has _my_ optics _."_

The suddenness of the lamp snapping back on and his subsequent curses as his lenses reacted rather painfully was sufficient enough a distraction that he didn't hear the door. It was only after his optics had adjusted yet again to the change in light level that he realized someone was standing in the room with him. He turned his head, fully expecting to see his brother standing there, after all the sudden amount of worry being cast through their bond was enough to put him on edge.

Instead his optics alighted on a smaller mech with gold-plated armor, staring at him, burning blue optics filled with trepidation.

"Hello."

It was a young but overtly scratched voice that issued forth from the yellow bot, optics flickering slightly, making that one simple greeting seem rather hesitant. He didn't respond right away, the conundrum of the mech's presence in his spark taking up nearly all of his processor power. Only after a long moment did he realize that, despite the strength of it, he did not have a direct connection to the young mech, only a peripheral. Once this was firmly established, the rest followed automatically.

He was staring at the third bright thread in his brother's spark.

"You—" he abruptly started to stay, trying to push himself up on the berth. His movement, however, made the golden mech take a half-step backwards, so he stopped and laid still. He waited a moment before speaking again. "Who are you?"

The smaller mech's gaze flickered downwards, as if this was not the expected response. Their connection dimmed a little bit, and he realized that the young bot had deliberately left it open, seeking recognition. After a few seconds the golden mech's head raised back up, optics burning a little brighter.

"My name is Bumblebee."

Again he noticed the scratched quality behind the voice, as if there were dust or some other kind of damage to his vocal capacitor. His gaze flicked to the yellow bot's throat and, sure enough, he saw the faint signs of scarring just beneath the plate lining the underside of the chin as if something had cla _wed through the metal with ease, grasping, crushing, nearly snapping the internal framework. In the same motion he drew his arm back, tossing the golden mech to the ground, anger coursing through him as he cast his opt_ ics away, jerking his head back to face the ceiling. He shuddered, cycling air through his vents to still whatever rage had brewed itself up with that short snap of a memory.

"I hurt you."

"Yes."

A confirmation not really needed, but the young bot seemed rather determined to talk to him.

"Then why are you in here?"

"I—I wanted to ask you something."

"Then ask it."

It was a harsh tone that he spoke with, made even darker sounding by the strange lingering bit of fury still burbling at the pack of his processor. The silence that followed it seemed rather thick, and he could feel a great deal of hesitance even through the dimmed connection.

"Are—are you my creator?"

"What!"

He snapped his head back to stare incredulously at the golden mech, for though he hadn't attempted to anticipate the young bot's query, he had certainly never expected such a notion to be presented.

"Are you my creator?" the smaller mech repeated, a little more firmly this time. "I—I know Ratchet said you can't remember much, but I thought—"

"You don't know who created you?"

The golden mech shook his head, and for the first time he noticed the little antenna attached to the younger bot's helm. Presently they were snapped in close to the little mech's head, making him wonder if they were an emotional indicator. He knew that the large circular panels, beneath his brother's stationary antenna often were occasionally a dead give away for his current mood. Though their primary purpose was to cycle coolant, they were often active whenever Optimus was feeling undue stress.

Maybe the flexible antennae served as extra sensors and the offset of their existence was a visual clue into the yellow bot's current state.

One of the fins flicked upwards a bit, accompanied by a flow of confusion from the link. He quickly reeled his thoughts back into focus.

"No," he said quietly, turning his gaze away. "I'm not your sire."

"But—"

"Don't tell me your auditory sensors are as broken as your voice box, I said I'm not!"

He hadn't meant for it to sound that way, so grating, so angry, so snappish, but the words had broken through before he could rein it in. The golden mech didn't flee, however, but stood there almost stubbornly just on the edge of his vision.

"Then—" the young bot—no, _Bumblebee,_ his processor corrected _—_ murmured. "It's Optimus, isn't it?"

He didn't respond to that, didn't feel a reply to be necessary. As it was his own thoughts were racing, tracing pathways through his processor detailing the consequences of actions he didn't remember even taking. He tried to align them, to assign a certain chronological order to what he had been told and what little he could recall.

He had killed Sentinel, his own sire, and for it had been thrown into the Stockades with the collective criminal population of the entire planet. A case as high profile as his, as influential as he had once been, no one would even consider submitting him to the whims of the reprogrammers, though the thought of being made into a downcast did flutter briefly through his processor.

The troubles with his memory core, however, were not the result of such a specific goal, but of something much more caustic. His recollections, when they burned through, were mostly broken fragments hardly longer than a moment. Those that did spin longer seemed to have no connection to anything of significance.

So he knew that he had been left within the darkness of Kaon.

And his brother had said that eventually the dissenters, the protestors, the scum who had broken the southern face of the Senate Hall, they had all started answering to him.

He didn't doubt it, not in the slightest.

The unrest had been building for so long, ever since the word 'rationing' had first been thrown about long before he had even taken office. The protests had been going a long time prior to when Sentinel had stepped down and handed off the title of Prime to Optimus. The bombing of the Senate Hall had been the first real act of destruction the mobs had wrought upon the world. Broken apart, undirected, with so many different smaller groups arguing over the specifics, they weren't so much of a threat. That someone would step forward to bring them together, this was what they had all feared.

Somehow he had become that someone.

Somehow the discontent had joined together enough to follow directions.

_His directions._

And Optimus had created this golden mech, and then had hidden him away, keeping so distant that the little bot had confused his own origins. He could see his brother's reasoning, could understand it all, but it didn't lessen the depressive shadow creeping back over his processor.

It was his fault.

_His fault._

He recalled the overheard arguments between the medic and his brother, that most objected to his presence.

He realized now more than ever just exactly what that meant.

"You're not supposed to be in here, are you?"

"No."

"Then you should go," he said, turning his head back towards the younger bot. Those blue optics were so much like his brother's, they had that same bright intensity. "Before you get in trouble."

"But—"

"You have the answer you came for, what more is there for us to talk about?"

Bumblebee looked a little lost for what to say, but most stubbornly did not budge from where he was standing. The antennae on the smaller mech's head were twitching somewhat, and he realized after a moment that this was a sign that the young bot was thinking very intently on what to say next. He wondered then, exactly how old the golden mech was, for though Bumblebee had what looked to be a final frameset, the little bot still displayed the traits of one still within the sub-adult stage.

"You kidnapped me once."

Again the proffered information was surprising and greatly unexpected.

"Did I?"

"When I was still a youngling," Bumblebee continued, head tilting to the side. "I don't remember much of it, just the way things felt. And I could feel your spark, so that's why I thought..."

He nodded slowly, understanding how such a mistake could be made.

_He has your optics._

There was a brief hesitation, a small hiccup in time within his processor as those words replayed themselves once more. He felt his intakes hitch for a moment, and before the decision could be properly thought through, he was speaking.

"I had a sparkling."

Bumblebee's optics widened somewhat, though perhaps more in surprise that he was actually volunteering information rather than at the information itself.

"Had?"

"I don't remember him, or his carrier," he murmured, shifting just slightly on the berth. This time the younger bot did not react to his movements, but instead stayed in place, staring at him. "I can't even feel them anymore."

"What do you mean, you can't feel them?" Bumblebee asked, and much to his surprise the smaller bot had shuffled forward slightly, his stare intensifying. "Like—like they're dead?"

"I don't know."

The golden mech looked about to say something else, but a sound from the med bay drew his attention away, head turning sharply towards the door. Beyond it there was a crash and the sound of several voices shouting at once, incoherent even if there hadn't been a door to muffle the noise. Bumblebee froze, however, apparently recognizing those doing the yelling, antennae flipping upwards in what could only be a display of surprise.

The little bot ducked quickly out the door, but stopped short within the frame. Beyond him, he could see that several of the berths and some of the equipment within the medical bay itself had been knocked to the floor. For a few brief seconds he saw his brother and the medic attempting to restrain the cause of the disorder.

Prior to the door having slid open, they had been succeeding.


	13. Subtext

_"What's got you so nervous?"_

_Optimus shot him a look from across the antechamber, clearly quite surprised that he'd picked up on it since it was quite apparent he was attempting to suppress that particular aspect of his mood at the moment. He couldn't help but smirk at the expression on his brother's face._

_"You're pacing," he pointed out, tapping his fingers on the top of the table he was currently sitting next to. "And you keep getting a far-off look in your optics. I know the Guild Council can be intimidating at this time of the vorn, but for you to be so fidgety about it—"_

_"It's not that."_

_"Then why are you acting so claustrophobic?"_

_"I have another date with Elita tonight."_

_This was not as concrete an answer as he had been expecting. He couldn't help but feel somewhat annoyed. His brother had been more and more distant as of late. He had thought, up until now, that it was due to the stress of being charged with the rebuilding of the Senate Hall._

_"Another one? You've gone on plenty of dates with her. Pit, she practically lives at our apartment now."_

_This earned him a rather exasperated glare, though it dissipated rather quickly, to be replaced with an expression of worried contemplation._

_"I—I'm going to ask her to bond with me."_

_His fingers froze mid-tap, leaving only the sounds of his brother's pacing footsteps across the floor. For a moment he just sat there, watching as Optimus completed several circuits between the narrow walls of the room. He imagined that, given a few more joors of such methodical movement that there would be a nice narrow groove worn into the metal floor._

_"Oh."_

_"I was going to tell you after the meeting," his brother said quietly, pausing to glance over at him. "I just—what if she says no?"_

_"Then I would say she's much smarter than I first gave her credit for."_

_He knew the jest was not something his brother would tolerate at the present moment, but he couldn't help feeling more than a bit resentful that Optimus had not told him of this plan until now. Ever since the Memorial, there had seemed to be a strange distance between the two of them that he couldn't accurately place. It was as if his brother was filtering what was going through their bond, letting only certain things through. Censorship of their connection usually only occurred if Optimus was upset with him for some reason, but it had never been this constrictive before and for the life of him he could not think of any particular reason for his brother to be angry with him._

_As predicted, he was given an extremely vexed look in response to his comment._

_"I'm being serious."_

_"So was I."_

_The expression on Optimus's face narrowed into another glare._

_"Why are you acting like this?"_

_"Like what?" he snapped, returning the glare with a scowl of his own. His brother didn't look away, instead taking on a very pointed expression, as if his response had solidified the elder mech's point. He ground his dental plates together, suddenly feeling very annoyed himself. "Well,_ _**excuse** _ _me for being irate when my brother, out of nowhere, announces that he's going to ask some femme for her spark without consulting me."_

_"I am consulting you—"_

_"No. You waited until I noticed something to tell me! You've deliberately been keeping it from me!"_

_"I have not!"_

_"Oh?" he spat out with an expression of mock surprise. "Then I suppose the fact that the only thing I've been able to glean off you in the last stellar cycle is the nervousness you've been displaying for the past few breems is a mere coincidence?"_

_The expression on his Optimus's face took on something akin to confusion, his brother blinking rather rapidly in surprise. After a few brief seconds he felt their bond untwist, the flow of that connection returning to normal._

_"I—I didn't realize..."_

_"No, I don't expect you did."_

_Now that their link was no longer constricted he could feel just how worried and even terrified his elder sibling currently was. He felt a mild flash of guilt for having been so upset over the block, especially now that he knew the strange storm of turmoil affecting Optimus's side of their bond._

_"I'm sorry."_

_"It's alright, I understand," his brother said, moving to sit at the table across from him. He stared at him a while, marveling at how easily Optimus forgave him for his somewhat petulant behavior. "I apologize for shutting you out, it's just...I've never felt this way about anyone before. It's confusing, it's unnerving, and more than a little bit terrifying."_

_"Well, then it's definitely love," he supplied with an amused sort of tone tacked on. "At least, according to definitions supplied by those flimsy half-credit novelettes the Archival Secretary keeps reading."_

_His brother gave him a fairly incredulous look._

_"She still flirts with you?"_

_"Every time I go down there, yes."_

_"Wow."_

_They sat there, the absence of conversation not so much a silence as it could have been. There were sounds of traffic in the hallway along the outer wall of the antechamber breaching whatever quiet had been achieved by lack of words. The meeting would begin soon, as by the sounds outside the auditorium was starting to fill, the heads of every Guild filing into their seats. He glanced at the doorway, half expecting to see his brother's assistant pop in to let them know that the Head of Ground Transit was once again arguing with the Head of Aerial Transit over flight altitude regulations._

_Some things were always a constant._

_"So," he murmured, turning to look back at Optimus. "I suppose I should move into the quarters over my office, then."_

_His brother looked startled by this, the circular panels on the sides of his head whirring a full circle before settling back into their accustomed position._

_"What? Why?"_

_"You honestly think I'd want to share an apartment with a newly bonded couple? I'd rather my processor not be scarred for life, thank you."_

_"But—HEY!"_

_He smirked slightly at the expression on his brother's face. It held just the right amount of indignation and pre-emptive embarrassment._

_"I'm sure you'll want some time to yourselves, free of the chance that someone will bang on the walls to get you to shut the slag up."_

_"You—"_

_"And besides, I've wanted my own space for a while now..."_

_"You have?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Oh."_

_His brother looked a little saddened by this revelation, casting his optics downwards at the floor._

_"I—I don't want this to drive a rift between us, brother," Optimus said quietly, head raising back up to look at him. "I mean, she hasn't even said yes yet."_

_"She will."_

_"How do you know that?"_

_"Because despite your hideous face, your occasionally disastrous clumsiness, and your rather grating vocal structure, she has stuck by you for the past vorn. I can only conclude that there must be several things wrong with her sensory network and possibly her logic centers."_

_He paused, making a show of frowning in thought before brightening up into a mocking grin at the return of the narrowed glare of annoyance on his brother's face._

_"Luck is in your favor, brother."_


	14. Restart

_He was sifting through the files in his office's archival space, trying to find several data pads that he knew pertained to that afternoon's meeting and failing miserably. It was rare that he found himself needing something from the file room after it had been put away, so there was very little by way of organization on the shelves. He was starting to get fed up with it all, even though he knew that the mess was technically his fault, when he heard the door connected to the corridor slide open. The footsteps that followed were almost too light for his audio sensors to pick up, so he swiveled his head to the side, glancing out the door frame._

_Crossing the floor of his office, a rather large stack of data pads balanced in her arms, was the downcast courier. He watched as she approached the desk and noticed that she seemed to be putting as little weight as possible on her left leg with every step._

_After a moment, he set aside the data pad he was holding and moved out from the file room, head tilting ever so slightly as he eyed the armor encasing her leg with a mild frown. The edge that he could see had been scraped and scratched clean of paint, the metal dented and in one place, slightly torn. It looked almost as if someone had grabbed her, encircling a single hand around her upper shin, and squeezed. The components beneath it had to have been shifted out of place, for her to be limping like that._

_She didn't notice him, too intent on fixing the inbox yet again. The new files she had brought in with her were sorted amongst the ones that remained from earlier in the orn. Those few with priority flags on them went directly on top, while the rest were very neatly ordered in accordance to a system he'd never quite noticed before. It occurred to him then, as he watched her switch the places of two different data pads to better suit the organization of the entire stack, that the office archives could use a similar treatment._

_The startled look on her face when she finally turned towards the outbox and noticed him sent a strange sort of discomfiture through his systems. He wasn't quite used to someone being so utterly terrified of his presence, though by now he probably should have expected it._

_She was afraid of everything, it seemed._

_"You're very good at organizing things," he told her, and saw her optics flicker, gaze ever so slightly turning back to the inbox and it's perfectly symmetrical stack of data pads. This was the only reaction to his statement that he could discern, as she did not respond verbally. Instead she stood in silence, her frame quivering ever so slightly and her head tilted towards the floor._

_He sighed, stepping over to sit down at his desk and motioning for her to move closer. There was a fractional amount of hesitation on her part. An uninterested observer more than likely would not have picked it up, but he saw it._

_He saw the knobs on either side of her head twitch in tandem._

_He saw the way her optics dimmed._

_He saw her frame tense._

_And a second later she was moving, the outbound messages no longer of any concern as she stepped gingerly around the side of the desk. He eyed her left leg, noting that from this angle the gouges that cut into the edges, pressing into the interior workings of her lower leg, as if someone had gripped it, fingers dig_ ging into painfully sensitive wiring, tearing a groan from his vocalizer.

"Primus, he's conscious," a voice, unfamiliar and partially muffled but it was hard not to catch the strangely uncertain note of fearful awe wound into it. His optics wouldn't respond when he tried to unshutter them to look.

"Stop gawking and help me!"

The medic's voice he recognized, though there was an edge to it now that he hadn't noticed in any previous experience. He supposed that it may have something to do with the fact that each and every one of his major systems was currently reporting back less than ten percent functionality. The thought crossed his processor that he should have felt a bit more concerned about that fact, but there was a strangely light, almost pleasant feeling flowing through his circuits now making it difficult to bring himself to care.

He tried to lift his head from the table, to crane his neck for _ward to inspect the wound._

_She froze._

_He felt a brief flash of anger towards whoever had caused this type of damage, for no doubt the culprit had a hand in cultivating her reactions to even the simplest of things. Though not quite the all encompassing paralysis he'd witnessed before, it was enough of a change in her stance that he felt inclined to state his intentions._

_"I'm just looking at your leg."_

_Her gaze once again flickered, optics shifting to focus on her injured limb._

_"It hurts, doesn't it?"_

_She slowly nodded her head._

_"Why haven't you seen a medic for it?"_

_There was no answer at first, in fact the pause before she spoke was so long that he began to doubt the validity of his own question. Maybe it was foolish to think that a downcast would even be allotted proper medical treatment._

_"This one can still walk," she pointed out, her voice soft and unassuming. "This one will not be allowed treatment unless this one can not work."_

_He made his decision then, not even allowing for the time to second guess himself. Turning in his chair, he opened up one of the drawers on his desk and pulled out a small metal case from within. It was a rudimentary patch kit containing the tools necessary to fix most small injuries. He kept it there as his office was usually the place he retreated to after a bout of sparring down on the Elite Guard training grounds or a particularly rough aerial exercise. He hadn't been using it very much as of late, too busy fielding reports from every sector of various protests over the current system of energon rationing._

_He clicked open the case and surveyed the contents, trying to determine if he had everything necessary to fix this particular injury. After a moment's scrutiny, he picked up a tool usually reserved for picking grit out of the harder to reach places under the armor and turned back to look at her. The tool was designed for someone his size, but as it was all he currently had to work with, he felt he could make do._

_"Let me see your leg," he said, leaning forward yet again, his other hand held out. Her optics went first to the tool and then trailed over to his other hand, an air of uncertainty flickering about her. "I'll fix it for you, I just...need to get a better look at it."_

_For the first time, she actually met his optics._

_It was fleeting, for as soon as her gaze leveled with his it snapped away again, but he saw the surprise, the disbelief._

_He shuttered his optics briefly as another fla_ sh of anger gripped his spark. It took a moment to realize that the emotion wasn't his own, but that of Optimus. He could hear, muffled by distance and perhaps several walls, his brother's voice. The tone of it made him flinch, although he sensed that this time around the anger was not aimed at him. What little relief that thought brought to his processor was pushed aside by the guilt of knowing that he had still been the cause of it.

"Clamp that line down."

He blinked, optics finally responding although the scene his visual centers returned was faintly blurred around the edges. He first saw the medic – Ratchet, his processor reminded – leaning in over the table, tools in hand and working furiously to reattach his arm. This startled him slightly, as he had not realized that the limb in questioned had been dislocated. Granted, he couldn't feel it, but that hadn't seemed all that much to go on considering that the rest of his sensory network was completely and utterly numb.

Another mech came into his view field sporting the same green and grey armor he had spotted sitting out in the medical bay some time previous. This one, however, sported a strange arrangement of fins sweeping out from the sides of its head and a mask like several bands of metal slotted together over the bottom half of the mech's face. It gave the bot a strange appearance, and had he any control over his own facial components he felt sure that the oddness of it would have caused him to frown. To his surprise the fins let off a slight glow as the mech looked over towards Ratchet, muttering something to the medic.

He cau _ght her looking out the window, gaze on the sky outside. It was the calmest he had ever seen her, posture relaxed, frame no longer trembling. Her optics followed the course of one of the Aerial Force squadrons as they made their daily patrol over Iacon. She wasn't smiling, such an expression had never found an occasion to grace her face._

_He wasn't sure she even knew how to._

_But she no longer appeared to be so utterly terrified, the light from the window casting a faint glow against the dull surface of her armor. That strange shine was just enough to blot out the myriad number of scrapes and dents that her frame had collected since he had last taken the time to fix them. For one, brief pause of a moment, she looked just like a normal bot._

_And then the illusion dissolved, her attention diverted from the window by his movement out of the door frame. She seemed to shiver, gaze falling immediately downwards, head bowing and shoulders sagging, once again a downcast._

_He couldn't keep himself from frowning at the discomfort that welled up inside him to see that transition into such a submissive posture. She hadn't said anything to him, though of course he had never expected her to._

_She wouldn't speak unless asked a question._

_Unless spoken to first._

_He moved to his desk, one glance at the in tray telling him that she had already brought in and arranged the morning messages sometime earlier. He paused briefly at this, a strange thought flickering through his processor as he scanned the ordered stack of data pads now lining the inbox. His optics flickered back to the courier as she stepped away from the window, taking note of the new set of scratches marring her frame in all the usual places._

_She had waited for him, he felt sure of it._

_Waited, despite the threat of punishment at being late for her other deliveries._

_He felt a pang of guilt then, prompting him to pull out the patch kit from its drawer as he had done several times over the past vorn. She spotted this, walking slowly, hesitantly over to stand beside his chair._

_As she drew closer he spotted a deep gouge high up on the metal plating of her right shoulder that would require more than just a patch of fresh paint to smooth over. He sat down, retrieving the soldering iron from the patch kit. He turned it on and set it aside, knowing that it would need a few breems to reach the required temperature. He waited, watching the readout on the iron as the numbers ticked slowly upwards, trying to keep from glancing sideways at the tiny trembling femme._

_He couldn't keep his optics from wandering, however, and he soon found himself contemplating the dull paint that adorned her frame._

_"What color did your armor used to be?" he asked without really thinking, realizing his thoughtlessness half a second later. It was a stupid question to ask a downcast, with no memories of a former life to recall. "Never mind that."_

_He turned back towards the desk, picking up the soldering iron and several strips of solder, quickly and deliberately checking at the temperature reading._

_"This will sting."_

_As gently as he could, he touched the tip of the iron to the top of the gouge on her shoulder. A slight sound escaped her vocalizer, though not quite the cry of pain he had expected. He wondered then if her system was really that desensitized, or if circumstances had simply conditioned her against giving voice to any kind of discomfort. He watched her out of the corner of his optics as he applied the solder to the wound, the melted metal filling the furrow in her armor. He swept the iron over it once to smooth it out, evening it with the edges of the gouge before setting the device aside._

_That done, he turned it off before looking through the patch kit again, selecting one of the paint canisters and an accompanying brush. With a practiced ease, he unfastened the lid dipped in the brush, coating the bristles before moving to trace it over the welt, watching as the silver-grey paint covered up the raw discoloration._

_"Blue."_

_He glanced at her, surprised at that sudden soft statement. It was rare for her to speak to him on her own initiative, he usually had to be very direct with his queries to provoke any kind of response out of the courier at all. His surprise turned quickly to concern, however, when he saw the pained frown adorning her face. It looked as if she had suddenly contracted a very unpleasant processor ache._

_"Blue?"_

_"L-l-light blue," she whispered, although she looked fairly uncertain as she raised her gaze upwards just a little bit. The little knobs atop her helm were twitching every which way, as if in a panic. "Maybe...this one is not sure..."_

_"Light blue," he echoed, musing on this information as he tempted to picture the downcast femme with armor of that hue. His processor produced an image with paler tones than the dull grey her current palette supported. "Sky blue? Yes, that's probably what it was."_

_There were still things missing from this imagining, however, and it caused a frown to develop across his face._

_The change in his expression, however, brought on a change in her posture._

_Her shoulders sank downwards and the knobs on her head revolved once before clicking to a stop. He stared at them, wondering what purpose they could possibly serve, as they seemed to only exist to fill the curved space between the vent on her forehead and plates covering her jaw. Under this much closer scrutiny, he noticed that there was a molded groove in the center of each knob, as if something used to be attached._

_Fins, maybe, but that would only make sense if she had wings of some sort._

_"Sir?"_

_He shook his head clear of those thoughts, rais_ ing his hand briefly off the table as feeling suddenly flowed back through his sensory network. The numbness retreated, leaving a brief moment of clarity before the pain attacked, so suddenly that it tore a fairly ragged cry of agony from his vocal processors.

"He doesn't respond well to sedatives, does he?" asked a voice whom he could only guess belonged to the grey and green mech, for it was still muffled despite its proximity. "That's third dose he's thrown off, Ratchet."

"I'm aware of that, Wheeljack," retorted the disgruntled tones of the medic from somewhere close by. He turned his head to the side, relief flooding through him at having control over his motor functions once more. The reflective green mech was no longer working on his shoulder, but checking the hook up of the IV now connected to his newly reattached arm.

"You still haven't told me what happened."

"Ironhide."

"Oh."

In a flash, the moments leading up to this most recent bout of unconsciousness came spiraling into focus. He recalled the golden youngling's fearful expression as the little bot ducked through the door and what lay waiting within the medical bay. He remembered the flash, the roiling blue charge of plasma launched in his direction, his frame locking up as it struck him, the force of the blast knocking him back off the side of the berth. The few seconds of lucidity afterwards, every detail of it sharpened from the wide opticked look of horror on Bumblebee's face to the mix of fear and worry rushing through the bond from both his brother and the youngling. An angered roar, close but far away at the same time and then the world had faded away into nothing.

Nothing.

A deep suffocating darkness that even now caused his frame to shiver at the memory. It hadn't lasted though, in truth the void had only swallowed him for but a few seconds before he found himself back within the confines of the isolation room, fresh recollections from the past plaguing his processor.

The pain was fading now, though the world remained in focus.

He could only guess that Ratchet had simply administered a dose of painkillers rather than waste more sedatives on someone who seemed quite adverse to their effect. He heard the door slide open, such a familiar sound by now, admitting his brother into the chamber with no more noise than the remote rolling of several gears and the faint sheer of the metal as it passed across the door frame.

He raised his head as Optimus approached and saw that the expression on his elder sibling's face was grim to say the least. For the first time he saw the weariness in his brother's optics, a feeling of sadness washing through him that was not entirely his own, but something shared between them like so many times when they were younger.

He wished fervently that it had been a happier emotion.

Optimus did not speak to him right away, gaze turning first to Ratchet.

"Ironhide will not be staying on base for the time being," his brother said in a quiet, even tone. He could tell, even without their connection announcing it, that Optimus was not happy with this fact. "He—"

"Why didn't you let him kill me?"

He felt every optic in the room turn to look at him, but kept his own gaze staring stoically upwards. He could see that the lamp mounted there no longer existed and that a good chunk of the ceiling was missing, the rest of it blackened and burnt. He supposed this was where the second round of plasma had struck, the shot that had missed, the one he felt sure his brother had prevented from being aimed directly at his already half healed spark chamber.

It was the logical conclusion, really.

Then all the unrest, all the turmoil, the stress that his continuing existence caused would be gone from the world. He would not have to fear that every moment, lucid or unconscious, might bring more horrifying memories of the monster he had become.

"He did."

The silence had been broken, not by Optimus or even Ratchet, but the one the medic had dubbed Wheeljack.

"Your spark…it was gone, your chamber was empty," the masked mech said slowly, disbelief rather evident within the tone of the other bot's voice. "We had just gotten you back on the table when it…reignited…yes, that's as good a term as any."

"How?"

The masked mech shrugged as he turned to look, the fins on either side of the bot's face lighting up rather briefly, much to his surprise. He had not expected to see the odd configuration of plates to be emotional indicators.

"It's only guesswork at this point, really."

"And your guess is?"

It was Ratchet who answered this time, voice sharper than he had ever heard it.

"Something is connected to your spark," the medic stated in a rather deliberate manner. "Preventing it from extinguishing in its entirety."

"W-what?"

"If I knew that we wouldn't be having this conversation."

With that remark, the medic left the room, though not before he got a good glimpse at the green mech's face. The expression there was far more than the mere grumpiness that he had seen upon it before, though he did not have enough time to read it entirely. It only took a half second before Wheeljack followed after, fins flashing out in distress, leaving him once more alone with his brother.

He did not know what to say, for the questions he most wanted to voice now were more for Ratchet than his elder sibling. However, Optimus chose to speak before he could collect the thoughts now running rampant through his processor.

"You've spoken with Bumblebee."

"Yes," he said quietly and he felt their connection tense, his brother's presence within his spark withdrawing slightly. He went on, however, even though he felt his spark start to constrict. "He asked me whether or not I was his creator."

He paused just a moment there, casting a glance at his brother's face and finding that carefully constructed neutrality resting there.

"He's yours isn't he?"

A half second's hesitance, and then Optimus nodded.

"And you never told him."

"No."

He sighed heavily, intakes expelling some small amount of dust most likely having accumulated there from the debris of the blast that had damaged the ceiling.

"I knew he wasn't mine," he murmured, watching his brother's face. "I—I had remembered—just a flash, just a scrap—my sparkling—"

He saw Optimus glance up, at the same time feeling a note of surprise and curiosity trickle through the bond.

"He has—had my optics."

"What?"

"Remember, they were white before. I don't know how or when I changed them—"

"White optics?" Optimus repeated, cutting him off. He heard a strange tone tacked on to his brother's voice, something like concern though he couldn't be quite sure. "You are certain of this?"

"Yes."

He frowned to himself, turning his head to look towards his elder sibling. It dawned on him slowly, though the expression on Optimus's face made the realization come quicker.

"You—you've seen him? Met him?"

His brother's face took on a strangely grave expression, head slowly nodding in confirmation.

"Yes," Optimus said quietly. "I believe I have."


	15. Semantic Interoperability

_The door ground open, gears unused for some time voicing their protest in a cacophony of grating sound. The mech sitting chained to the chair within shifted only slightly, head slowly raising up, pale white optics barely visible under the glare of the lamps mounted on the ceiling. He stepped inside the chamber, a strange disquiet washing over him at the lack of expression on the captured bot's face. The gaze that followed him as he crossed the room to stand before the table was devoid of any discernible emotion. The dark mech's frame did not tense nor give any other visible reaction to this new presence in the room._

_Such lack of response was off-putting, for he was accustomed to prisoners that displayed their hatred for him outright, either visibly with a narrowed optic glare or verbally with every curse ever invented. This silence, this lack of animation was unexpected and more than a little disturbing._

_The mech had the build of a seeker, one of the rarer framesets, with down swept wings and armor so dark a blue it was almost black. The paint was marred with scratches and scrapes from the recent battle. There was a large dent on the bot's right shoulder plate, as if he had taken a direct blow from some other mech's fist. He knew that were he to look closer at the dark seeker's injuries, he would find black paint mixing with the blue, evidence of the bot's attacker and perhaps the cause of the dent._

_None of the wounds seemed to bother the mech at all, sitting there with a sharp gaze as if injury was the least thing to worry over._

_"What is your true designation," he inquired calmly, trying to keep the disconcerting feeling now worming away at his internals from showing on his face._

_There was a very brief silence in which the fins connected to the side of the dark seeker's face twitched ever so slightly._

_"You have already been told my name._

_The bot spoke in a way that was, at the very best, disconnected._

_There was no tone._

_No inflection._

_It was simply a voice that existed to fulfill its purpose as a sonic representation of information and nothing more._

_"Driftside? The one you supplied to the team that found you?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Yet the mechs we met in battle today called you differently."_

_"Yes, they did," the dark seeker responded promptly, the passive non-expression upon his faceplates unchanging. "It was an unfortunate occurrence."_

_"For you, yes."_

_"I have not lied to you or anyone else here."_

_"You are a Decepticon."_

_"No I am not."_

_"Then how do you explain that those mechs knew who you were?"_

_"I_ _**was** _ _a Decepticon," the dark seeker replied, a forced emphasis placed pointedly on the tense modifier, optics briefly flaring. "As of now I no longer follow that particular creed."_

_Here he paused, staring at the chained bot in the chair before him, wishing for a moment that the dark seeker had, at the very least, lashed out in anger rather than plying deliberate intonement upon a single word. He would have been more inclined to believe an angry rebuttal than this cold and almost calculated approach to the matter that this bot seemed to be taking._

_"So you wish to defect?"_

_"I have already defected."_

_"I meant--"_

_"I know what you meant," the dark seeker said evenly, no increase in volume to accentuate the interruption. "I have no wish to join the Autobots. I will have no sigil etched in my armor ever again."_

_Only here did an inkling of emotion leak through, as the mech's head raised up in an almost arrogant fashion, the faint hint of pride seeping into the voice as the last few words were spoken. Here was a free mech, perhaps not a true neutral but one he now felt would not bring any harm to those under his own command. He stood there for a moment, waiting for any more questions or other thoughts to drift into his processor to challenge the decision he was preparing to make concerning the captured seeker. None came and he turned back towards the door, keeping his own expression solemn as it creaked open, allowing him to ex_ it the memory, though some slight disorientation remained for a moment afterwards. He watched silently as his brother detached the wires from their wrists, an expression of concern forming across his elder sibling's face at his silence. Misinterpreting, not noticing that he'd held back his uncertainty from their bond when the physical connection had first been suggested, that he held it back even in the aftermath. He had wanted it, to see the memory his brother had to offer in the way they had used to share as younglings after spending orns apart on different training grounds. They had traded insulting nicknames for their respective mentors, laughed over incidents that others in their classes had caused, and banished the loneliness that had developed while they were separated.

Again he wished to be back in that time, his only worries whether or not their creator would approve of the marks he'd earned at the Academy.

"That was the only time that I ever spoke with him," Optimus said in a quiet, almost careful tone, breaking through his thoughts. "One of our scout patrols had picked him up a few dozen orns prior to then--fifteen thousand vorns ago by now. He had been injured attempting to reach what remained of the Archives in Iacon."

"The Archives were destroyed?"

"Yes."

"By me?"

"By those under your command."

"Decepticons," he murmured, recalling the term from the memory his brother had fed him. It felt odd as it passed over his vocalizers, strangely familiar, as if he had said it many, many times in the past. He felt his brother tense through their bond, a faint inkling of fear trickling through, nearly mirroring his own personal terror at what might happen if he fully regained his memories. He pushed it aside, focusing instead on other details the memory had supplied-- His son was alive, with a seeker frameset so rare that its construction was usually reserved for those who were sparked as such. His spark mate had to have been a seeker then, to have carried a sparkling with such a unique build. A frown crept its way across his face, however, as his processor cycled through Optimus's words "Why was he trying to get to the Archives?"

"I do not know," his brother answered, shaking his head slightly. "I was disinclined to believe the reasons that he supplied at the time. He had told us he was searching for information on a certain bot, but refused to even supply the designation of who he was looking for."

"It was his carrier."

The voice that cut through was Ratchet's, surprising them both. His brother even gave an almost startled sort of twitch, as neither of them had even heard the door slide open again. This dissolved the medic's grumpy expression for a scant few seconds, an almost amused glint appearing in the reflective green bot's optics. It vanished the minute the mech saw him watching, replaced once more with the grouchy glare he'd become accustomed to.

"Care to tell me how the conversation turned to that slagger, Nightblade?" Ratchet inquired, turning to scowl at Optimus. "Thought we had an agreement, Prime."

"I know, Ratchet," his brother said quietly. "But I believe he has the right to know the fate of his own sparkling."

At this the medic let out a loud snort.

"Of all the stupidest--There's no way in pit that Nightblade is _his_ sparkling."

"He fits the description--"

"Description? What description?"

"I remembered some things," he muttered, feeling some slight annoyance at the medic's attitude. He very carefully pushed himself into a sitting position upon the table. The painkillers were still in effect, but he did feel some slight discomfiture at the motion. He saw, with a glance down at his frame, that the metal over his shoulder had melted ever further. The marks of the plasma round that had struck him were still evident and despite Ratchet having reattached his remaining arm he could feel the joint at the shoulder seizing up when he tried to place more weight on it. "I know that my sparkling was a mech, and that he had my optics. Not these--"

He flashed his own optics for emphasis.

"--but white ones. My optics were white once."

Ratchet glared at him, still looking defiantly skeptical.

"Even so, if Nightblade--"

"Why are you referring to him with that designation? I thought his name was Driftside."

He glanced at his brother, who sighed wearily.

"Driftside was the designation he supplied, true," Optimus said slowly. "But the Decepticons that we encountered upon attempting to assist him in reaching the archives referred to him as Nightblade. As this secondary designation is the only one that there is any record of--"

"It's his only designation, Prime," Ratchet broke in angrily. "That other name was just a front, a lie to get what he wanted. Just like everything else he said."

"I do not believe that he lied."

"Doesn't mean it wasn't true."

"He did not openly attack anyone on our base or attempt to access any area or computer without permission. Yes, he defended himself when Ironhide attacked him, but--"

"And I'll say what I said when it happened, you were an idiot to let him go after that--"

"Excuse me."

Both of them turned to look at him, the argument temporarily forgotten.

"What exactly did he lie to you about?" he inquired, looking pointedly at the medic. It seemed to him the reflective green mech had suffered personally from this incident, and it puzzled him.

"That's none of your slagging business."

"Ratchet--"

"No! You know damn well I don't want to talk about that and you're not going to make me just to soothe _his_ nerves."

With that the medic stormed out again, looking quite furious.

As the door slid shut once more, he heard his brother heave sigh and picked up what felt like guilt seeping through their connection. He frowned uncertainly, puzzled for a moment before realizing that Optimus was simply trying to express an apology over the medic's attitude.

"There's no need for that, brother."

"But--"

"I'm fairly certain at this point that whatever has made him act so hostile towards me, it is because I did something to deserve it."

Optimus gave him a sad look and he knew that what he said was true.

"He used to work in Central Tower, you know," his brother said after a brief lull, glancing at the door leading out to the medical bay, voice kept low as if afraid the medic would hear. "He was the medic assigned to the bots in the underground levels."

"Really?"

His brother nodded, but he barely saw it, a sudden thought flashing across his processor. He could not say what made this particular musing arise right then, but recent recollections prompted him to speak up.

"He worked with the downcasts then, didn't he?"

"Yes."

A strange tension struck him with that answer, the bond constricting quite noticeably. His brother's voice barely echoed this, but he felt certain that he had hit upon something vital. He hesitated, uncertain as to whether or not pressing further would yield any more information.

"There was one that had been assigned as his part time assistant," Optimus said quietly, carefully avoiding his gaze. "But she was offlined."

It didn't take much more than that to guess now why the medic did not like him.


	16. Dead Code

_"No."_

_He did not need to look to know whom that small declaration of disobedience came from. That dark tone, barely audible, an inflection so hardly ever used, held no room for argument._

_There were not many who would dare to disagree or disobey him in so blatant a manner. Even fewer who could do so and still manage to walk away. The singular statement, presented without fanfare or any other note of disapproval, disqualified the most popular culprits immediately._

_"Perhaps you would like a more challenging target," he offered, frame barely shifting as he raised his optics to regard the mech before him. There were not many amongst his ranks that could meet his gaze without flinching, that number ranking within the singular digits. Pale white optics, almost ghostly in appearance under the lights of the chamber itself, stared back at him. He chose not to remark on the change in spectrum, but he could not ignore the recently painted over patchwork upon the dark seeker's middle collar plate._

_The sigil was gone._

_**His** _ _sigil was gone._

_"No."_

_Again with that word, that finality, spoken louder this time, enough so that it echoed slightly around the room._

_He waited, watching the mech, his own face expressionless._

_Normally the silence would have been enough to spur any other subordinate into an explanation for their behavior, and he would have to endure a long, tiring string of apologies and grating pleas for mercy. This was never the case with Nightblade, who stood there so still that the bot could have been one of the statues that had once adorned the halls of the Mausoleum in Iacon. Silence was the dark seeker's element, an intrinsic part of the over all structure of the mech's existence, drilled into the processor from having lived the first part of life amongst what remained of Halicon. Raised in a place where any sound could be the dividing line between life and the void, it was no wonder that, when properly trained, the young mech had soon become one of his more reliable warriors._

_The promotion to head of the special ops division had come a relatively short time ago, and until this moment the dark seeker had given no indication of displeasure at the assignment. Except there was no displeasing tone, no discord in Nightblade's voice save for that deliberate and almost insignificant emphasis. A monosyllabic word and the mech pronounced it with such a gravity that it seemed much greater than two simple letters strung together._

_"Explain."_

_It was a simple command, obeyed almost immediately, though in the slight pause before Nightblade spoke he noticed a slight change in the dark seeker's posture. It was subtle, a mere shifting of weight, but it caught his attention none the less. That one finite movement allowed for the maximum amount of range of the mech's wings. It drew his gaze to the seams along the edges, barely visible even under the lights of the throne room._

_"There is much I have condoned in the past," the dark seeker stated, gaze unwavering. "Recent events have given me cause to re-evaluate my current standings. I will be leaving and so will my crew."_

_"And you are telling me this for what reason?" he inquired, optics narrowing imperceptibly. "What purpose does alerting me to your plans serve, when you know full well the consequences of defection?"_

_"Defection implies an intent to change affiliation. This is not what I plan to do."_

_"Oh? And what is it that you_ _**plan** _ _to do?"_

_Here there was hesitation, a faint flickering of those pale optics and there it was. The detachment so inherent to the dark seeker's personality dissipated as the connection between them rose to the surface. The link was faint, tangled and skewed when mere proximity should have made it stronger. Across it, bleeding through that knotted thread was a doubt so strong that, if it were not for the broken nature of the bond, he would have thought it to be his own. Interwoven with that doubt was a sense of fear and worry that soon took predominance over that first initial emotion, causing a frown to et_ ch it's way across his face.

His optics snapped open, a slight shock coursing through his spark at the sudden proximity of those emotions when there had been such a tangled sort of distance not even a second previous. It took a moment to realize that he had slipped off into recharge again, into a memory no doubt spurred by the revelations of the previous orn. Further speculation was deterred by the sight of bright blue optics staring at him from the side of the table, the sense of worry that had woken him quite evident in that burning gaze.

"Are you alright?"

He supposed he should have expected the question given that this was his brother's spawn. No doubt that unending empathy had somehow been passed on to the younger mech in a sufficient enough quantity that the golden bot was prone to disregarding authority in order to do what felt right. He imagined that the medic and possibly even Optimus had warned the smaller mech against returning here, only to be ignored outright.

Slowly, he raised his head off the table to look at his injured shoulder and the plates that had nearly been melted together from that plasma blast. After a moment, he sighed and let his helm fall back against the table.

"All things considered, I believe I got off easy."

This earned him a laugh from the golden bot, though it was a wheezy sort of sound, strained by the damage long since wrought on the young mech's vocalizers. He glanced away, shuttering his optics for a moment, nearly wishing that he had not woken up if only to have avoided yet another reminder of the destruction he had caused.

"I wanted to talk to you again."

"Yes," he muttered, turning his head back to look at Bumblebee. "I had gathered as much."

"I...I heard you and Optimus talking before...about Nightblade..."

He watched the golden bot carefully, feeling a curiosity building up inside him. A quick calculation from what his brother had mentioned of the incident concerning the dark seeker and that curiosity changed quickly to anticipation. This excitement must have bled through the link, for the antenna atop Bumblebee's helm twitched upwards, head tilting to the side in puzzlement.

"Did you--have you met him?"

The younger mech's head slowly bobbed up and down.

"I was with the team that first found him," Bumblebee told him quietly, voice staticking only slightly. "It was only my second time on a real patrol and...well, he was hurt very badly when we found him. He was shot clean through the shoulder."

He saw the golden bot glance at the door, antenna slowly sinking back down.

"Ratchet said...he should have died from that bad of a blast wound."

"But he didn't."

Bumblebee nodded again, shoulders shifting with another furtive glance towards the door.

"I didn't really get a chance to talk to him at all...I got sent to another base soon after that patrol. It was Ratchet who spoke with him the most."

He nodded, having guessed as much from the medic's reaction. Here he frowned again, now recalling the scene from which he had been roused from, that few scant second memory of an unsteady and twisted connection. He held a certainty in his processor now that the midnight blue seeker was his son, no matter what the medic claimed.

Such a bond, no matter how gnarled, was impossible to fake.

"He was looking for his carrier," he murmured, echoing that short, succinct statement that Ratchet had spoken. He remembered the medic's tone in the argument, the annoyance, the anger, and the strange note of disquiet. His optics widened as a thought snapped its way across his processor. "Ratchet knew his carrier!"

He struggled to sit up then, though he was too wound up in this revelation to pay much attention to the efforts of the movement, soon finding himself falling back against the table. He barely noticed the brief look of uncertainty that passed over Bumblebee's face before the golden bot moved in to help, propping his shoulder until he was sitting balanced on the edge of the table. The younger mech stepped back, again glancing at the door, optics burning with a worry echoed through their connection, though he barely noticed.

His thoughts flickered, racing back and forth within his processor at nearly incoherent speeds, an excitement building within his spark.

_The medic knew his bond mate._

And with that singular conclusive inference his spirits began to sink, a sudden fear began to wind its way through his system.

_The medic knew his bond mate._

"I...I need to speak with Ratchet."

This statement issued forth nearly too quiet for his own auditory sensors to pick up on. He had been heard, however, though after a half step towards the door Bumblebee seemed to hesitate, perhaps rethinking his request. He didn't repeat himself, a creeping sort of dread now clamping over his spark. Maybe the golden bot felt this permeating the link, spurring him out the door and out of sight only to return mere moments later with the medic in tow.

"—you're just as bad as the twins, I swear! As if there's not enough problems around here—"

The voice stopped and he raised his head, finding himself under the direct aim of an extremely irritated sort of glare. He saw Bumblebee duck back out the door, a fresh dent marring vent atop the golden bot's helm.

"Well? I don't have all day."

"I wanted to ask you about Nightblade."

The glare intensified.

"You knew his carrier."

"I knew the femme he _claimed_ to be his carrier," Ratchet corrected, voice tinged with more anger than annoyance now. "He _claimed_ a lot of things that turned out not to be true."

"His carrier would have been my sparkmate—"

"He's not your sparkling."

"—and you knew her," he finished, ignoring the medic's last statement. "Who was she?"

"He isn't your sparkling."

"How can you know that?"

"I've scanned your spark somewhere near a dozen times," Ratchet snapped, optics narrowed. "The only connections still going strong are the ones linking you to Optimus and Bumblebee. Every other one is dead. Dead!"

"So?"

"Nightblade's still alive."

He shook his head, refusing to believe this in the face of his newest recovered memories.

"He is my sparkling. I can remember him."

"Half your memory files are corrupted," the medic stated, jabbing a finger at his helm. "It may well be that the files have taken to blending in order for your internal repair systems to work properly."

"No, I don't believe that to be the case."

"It's the most likely explanation—"

"You're just saying that because you don't want to answer my question."

"So? It's none of your business who she was!"

"It is!" he protested, a sense of great agitation sweeping through him. "If she was Nightblade's carrier—"

"She wasn't."

"If she was my sparkmate—"

The room toppled over, or at least that's what it felt like before the pain in his jaw alerted him to the fact that he had been punched. He groaned, squinting up at the medic now glaring down at him from over the edge of the table, though it was perhaps his imagination causing the perceived expression to be somewhat tempered. It came as a surprise when the reflective green mech rounded the table and moved to help him up. Though quite bewildered, he did not complain.

Spending the night on the floor was not appealing in any case.

"She was my assistant," Ratchet stated, shoving him back on the table, the glare still in place upon stepping back. "And while it's true she did have a sparkling, they're both offline."

"How?"

He knew the moment that word left his vocalizer that he should have kept the question to himself. The medic met his optics, that glare unwavering for even a second, voice sharp and unyielding.

"You killed her."


	17. Analog Loopback

It wasn't boredom that drove him to attempt to latch on to the frequencies of the base's comm link, but a desperate need for a distraction from the thoughts swirling about his processor. His brother was busy, though with what had not been told as the medic was refusing to speak or even have any contact with him. His energon had been brought in by Wheeljack over the past few orns, but the masked mech wasn't up for much conversation, leastways, not on the subjects he wanted to discuss.

His discussion with Ratchet, if it could even be labeled as such, still echoed about, stirring up confusion within his processor whenever he tried to sort through it. He wanted to string together the facts, to align them in a way that was cohesive and sensible, but every time he tried to untangle them, the medic's words would echo back, cutting any links his processor could devise. It caused an ache within his helm and within his spark, so seeking something to draw his attention away from his own thoughts was only natural.

But the base's frequencies did not respond to his queries, and it was only after the third try that he realized that it wasn't due to an error on the part of the servers. His comms were blocked, the protocols for which to activate them having been altered to prevent their utilization, although the systems themselves were still there. This brought with it several connected revelations, for there were a few other programs tied into his internal comm network that showed no signs of life either.

His long range scanners and local radar were offline, as well as half a dozen sub-systems linked to his visual and audio centers. He wasn't quite certain how he hadn't noticed that he was in effect half blind until now, having simply assumed that such systems would work when they were needed. As no warnings or error reports had looped back concerning any of these systems, he was forced to conclude that they had been deliberately shut down.

Deliberately kept apart from the rest of the base, a patient and a prisoner all at once.

He turned his head to look at the door, for the first time resenting the fact that he couldn't reach it. He was tired of this room and its empty, bare white walls leaving nothing to do but think. He was tired of his thoughts and where they drifted, giving him no rest at all, no way to escape. He was tired of being unable to move or even simply sit up without assistance, his missing limbs seeming all the more vital amidst sensory deprivation.

He flexed his arm, pushing against the table, though the action did not bring about the result he had intended. Instead of sitting up, he caused himself to shift to the side and the change in weight distribution soon had him sliding off the table and onto the floor. He managed to slow the fall, however, gripping the edge of the medical berth until he was merely inches from the ground. He let go then, wincing slightly as the remains of his missing leg was ground into the tile under his weight.

Uncertain as to what it was exactly he was really trying to accomplish, he stretched out his arm, gritting his dental plates as his clawed fingers dug out a firm enough grip. He pulled himself forward, hissing slightly as the edges of his missing chest plates scraped against the floor. It caused such a grating, screeching sort of noise, caustic to his auditory sensors but it wasn't enough to keep him from repeating the motion, dragging himself closer to the door. As he had suspected, it was controlled by proximity sensors, sliding slowly open as he moved into range.

The medical bay looked quite different from this angle, the equipment tables and medical berths a jungle of metal struts and wiring. He stopped halfway in the doorframe to peer through them, glancing about the larger chamber for any sign of the medic, but it seemed that for the moment the reflective green mech was absent from the facility.

He continued forward, reaching for the edge of the nearest berth to pull himself up when a small movement near the far end of the room caught his optic. He turned his head, noticing first the large doors leading out into the base itself, though his gaze flicked from the bottom frame to something else set into the wall next to them. It appeared to be another door, much smaller and narrower in structure, currently held open to the hall outside.

Such an opening could not possibly admit a full grown bot or even a drone for that matter, and for a moment he frowned, unable to discern its purpose until...something—no, someone walked through it.

He froze in a twisted kind of shock, for never once in his processor had he imagined that the dominant species of this planet would be organic.

The possibility of sentient organic life had long been hypothesized by some of the more eccentric researchers lecturing out of the Academy of Sciences in Altihex. Very few took such claims seriously, after all, it was ridiculous to think that a species composed of something as flimsy as carbon could survive long enough to produce even a meager semblance of intelligence. He had been forced to sit through some of these lectures, having at one time been directly responsible for approving off world research projects. That had been in the early days of office, before he had learned the true meaning of the word delegation.

Yet here, standing not even a few dozen meters away was evidence that those scientists had been right.

He stared, not daring to move from his spot at the base of the berth, watching the organic as it moved into the room, carrying a large box of some sort. It wore some kind of outer covering over its frame, half of which was composed of closely knit plastic filaments while the rest was constructed from carbon fibers, all completely useless as protective materials. It added an extra oddity to the organic's appearance, for there was also an elaborate collection of filaments literally attached to the thing's helm, hanging down over its shoulders.

He shifted slightly, watching as the organic set the box down on a small table within the far corner of the room, that particular area obviously set up to accommodate someone of such a small size. After several seconds of observation as the organic began to unpack the contents of the box, he became quite certain that it was a femme. Its movements and stance was far too fluid to be that of a mech, though he was quite sure that the terms of his race more than likely didn't apply to that of an organic species.

Again he shifted his frame, edging a bit closer as the organic crouched down out of sight to put something away inside of a cabinet beneath the table. There was a creak as the berth he was supporting himself on moved, scraping slightly on the floor, pushed by his weight as he tried to keep himself steady.

The sound evidently caught the organic's attention, head snapping up, the features of it's face contorting into what could only be a frown. It turned its gaze slowly in his direction, searching for the source of the noise. He wondered then exactly how acute it's auditory sensors were, though he was not given much time to contemplate this before realizing that his grip on the berth was slipping. He tried to tighten his hold on the edge of the table, but gravity was against him and with a crash he fell back to the floor.

He cursed, feeling a bit disoriented as he tried to push himself back up, his processor starting to ache again. Raising his head off the floor, he froze, finding the organic femme standing just a few meters away, gaping with an expression that could have been anything from astonishment to horror.

He guessed it to be the latter when the scream rang out.


	18. Local Scope

"What the hell!?"

There was an emphasis on each word, though what he found a bit more fascinating was the fact that he could understand them. Though the medic had the little organic's language printed across several plates, he had never really given much thought to the fact that his processor had a premade set of interpretive protocals ready and waiting. It was an odd distraction, listening to the alien femme rant at his brother, attempting to decipher from context the equivalency of certain words in his own language.

For a few seconds he felt a twisted sort of amusement at the brief guilty expression that flickered across Optimus's face. Such a familiar sight from the time when they were younglings, caught doing something that their creator would no doubt dissapprove of. That this tiny organic femme could invoke the same nearly caused a laugh to break its way through his vocal processers.

He managed to hold it in, that urge, knowing full well that this was not the time for it.

He wasn't sure there ever would be a time for it again.

"Mikaela, please calm down-"

"Calm down!" the organic echoed, voice increasing in volume. He was not quite certain how the strange femme was even managing to sustain such a high decibel level to begin with, let alone raise it higher. " _He's_ supposed to be at the bottom of the ocean! What the hell is there to be calm about right now!"

"I can explain."

"Okay, yeah. Start with the part about _him_ being still alive. I bet that's an awesome story."

A hand was waved in his general direction for emphasis. In the flurry in activity that had followed the little organic's shriek of terror, the medic had seen fit to leave him in the medical bay while Wheeljack set about rewiring the isolation chamber's door controls. He had been hauled up onto one of the tables, glared at with an expression of great annoyance, and then promptly ignored in favor of adding to the din by yelling at whoever was on surveillance duty.

He could hear Ratchet's angry tones still echoing down the outer corridor despite the doors to the med bay being shut.

"Well?"

His brother cast a hesitant glance in his direction.

"We did not know he was alive until nearly two weeks ago," Optimus said, sounding for a moment as if deliberately attempting to steady the words as they came out. "A signal was detected and we investigated. We did not know we would find him."

For a brief moment he caught a twisted swirl of emotions through the bond, but it was such a quick flicker, he couldn't decipher what they were.

"And you just decided to haul him back here without telling anyone?" the small femme asked, fingers massaging forehead as if struck by a sudden processor ache. "Okay, that's just an assumption there-"

"A correct assumption."

"What?"

"The-"

"You're telling me that NO ONE knows about this!"

This time he couldn't hold back the amusement at seeing his brother shifting uncomfortably on his feet like a troublesome sparkling, a short chuckle escaping his vocal processor before he could even think to stop himself. A flash of annoyance broke through the bond, nothing more than mild irritation but it prompted an outright laugh which in turn earned him what he could only assume was an incredulous stare from the organic femme.

After a moment, that gaze returned to Optimus, silently asking for an explanation.

"Please understand," his brother began, heaving a small sigh. "We had every intention of alerting our liasons within your United States government, however, the situation has changed. With their current level of disorganization, we can not trust them to act rationally even if presented with all the facts."

"Wait, what do you mean the situation has changed?"

There was a pause, a small tremor of hesitation reverberating through the bond.

"According to Ratchet's analysis, more than fifty percent of his memory core has been corrupted."

"Corrupted? What, like he has amnesia?"

"While that term is similar only in its most basic sense, I suppose it could be applied."

"So...he doesn't remember anything?"

"You know, I'm sitting right here," he muttered dully. "You could just ask me what I remember or not instead of just standing there being speculative."

He had expected to be ignored and so was mildly surprised when the small femme swivelled on her pedes to glare at him, fisted hands balanced upon hips.

"Okay then. Mission City, remember that?"

"No."

"No? You pretty much destroyed all of downtown!"

He hesitated, not because of any sort of hazy recollection but because he sensed that there would be no proper way to respond to such an accusation under the current circumstances.

"All of it?"

"Okay, maybe not all, but you get the point!"

"Mikaela," interrupted Wheeljack, though the masked mech's gaze nerver left the mess of wires now protruding from the wall panel. "Our memory cores do not function that way."

"What?"

"You're trying to get him to remember something without any cue but your words. English is not the language our processors are hardcoded for and therefore would not provide the right kind of stimulus to trigger a memory."

"Right."

"Either way, I can verify Ratchet's initial scan," the grey and green mech continued, reattaching a few wires into their proper places. "Though I do believe that he has recovered a bit more since then."

The tiny femme glanced from Wheeljack back towards him, what could have possibly passed as a speculative look on her face before turning her gaze upwards once more. His brother stood to the side, a wariness in his own expression, as if bracing himself for another tirade from the organic.

"So...we're definitely not telling Sam about this are we?"


	19. Object Oriented

_The construction of the new refineries in Kalis had taken him away from the capital for nearly twenty orns, far longer than he had initially anticipated upon agreeing to the visit. He had taken over the project from his brother after the Senate bombing; wanting to minimize the stress Optimus was feeling from having to oversee the rebuilding effort in Iacon._

_There had been protesters. They were camped outside the temporary barricades blocking off the new facility from the rest of the sector. He had noticed their glares as he'd walked past, as if his mere presence was a mark of approval on the project itself._

_It was an annoyance, such an assumption._

_He hadn't signed off on the development and neither had his brother. Their creator had rallied his fellow council members and appealed to the Senate. They had been outvoted on the matter and due to the involvement of the High Council, neither of them could overrule the decision without causing further discontentment with the senators._

_He hated it, that Sentinel wielded so much power even after officially stepping down from office. It made the things he and Optimus promised to do so much harder to get done. That their creator could manipulate the system to whatever end was both sickening and far too self-serving. New refineries weren't needed, not when the existing ones were barely running at half capacity. Even if the influx of off-world energon exceeded all expectations, the maximum amount of new facilities that would be required was far less than the eight that were currently being built. It was a waste of resources, a waste of time. No off-world site had yet to yield anything close to what was needed to supply Cybertron._

_Yet every proposal to fund research towards using other compounds to synthesize energon went unheeded or worse, mocked, by the High Council._

_He was just thankful that Sentinel hardly ever left Iacon to oversee these projects, else he'd have to put up with that constant look of disapproval. The larger dark green mech would have been sitting across from him in the tram, bright blue optics narrowed and flaring angrily. Sentinel wouldn't have given voice to that anger, but would have simply stared for the entire ride, silently reprimanding everything from his posture to his paint job._

_Though a return to Iacon meant closer proximity to the object of his current ire, this did not cut back into his relief upon arrival back at Central Tower. It was a relief that lasted only as long as the elevator ride up to his quarters. A longer trip and a sudden stop at a different floor, this was a constant reminder of his new living arrangements. No longer needing their shared apartment some floors below, he and his brother had taken up residency in the quarters above their respective offices. It was still new enough a transition that he sometimes found himself walking back to their old rooms before remembering that he no longer lived there._

_He had no qualms about his new quarters. They were spacious and had both access to a balcony overlooking the city and to the roof. He had his own washrack now, his own vid-screen, his own shelves._

_Yet he avoided them. Too used to sharing space with another, the quarters had a hollow feeling to them, cold and unwelcoming. He found himself heading into the familiarity of his offices instead, the intention to get a head start on the reports regarding the construction project brewing in his processor._

_He was surprised, not by the presence of the courier, for it was about the time for the afternoon messages, but by the tiny femme's appearance. Gone was the lacework of scratches and patchwork paint that had previously marred her frame. The dents so common to her thin armor had vanished. In place of the usual decorations on her plating was a uniform coat of blue – still dull, still the cheapest kind of paint, but smoothly applied and clean of smudges and scrapes._

_He tilted his head, struggling to comprehend this new sight, this new development. It was a moment later when he realized he was staring, optics lingering upon her slim frame in places that had never once caught his attention before. Cautiously, he stepped into the room, keeping his movements deliberately measured and slow, knowing how easily she could be startled._

_She turned, optics flickering slightly upon spotting him._

_"You...look...nice," he stated, slowly, uncertainly, the words conflicting with prior established concepts within his processor. Her head dipped down, gaze flitting to the floor and optics dimming in what he recognized now to be a gesture of embarrassment. It was such a change from the near tangible cloud of fear that had surrounded her before, he wasn't certain what to make of it. "No injuries...?"_

_"No sir..."_

_"Who...fixed you?"_

_"There is a new medic, sir," the courier answered, frame tensing as the words were spoken, almost pulling in, shrinking. "This one has been helping the new medic...in between rounds..."_

_"And he fixed you?"_

_A small nod and a brief, hesitant glance upwards, but otherwise no movement. The fear had returned, though it seemed to have different quality about it. As if she were anticipating a negative reaction to the news that someone other than himself had repaired her injuries._

_He considered this, a minute frown creeping its way across his face plates as he tried to come up with an accurate description of his opinion of the matter. So the lower levels had finally gotten a medic that did his job no matter the societal status of the bot who needed fixing. That the downcast femme had been adopted as an assistant assured that any injuries she might obtain throughout the day would be promptly repaired. Not only that, such a station might even act as a deterrent against further abuse – very few bots would ever cross a medic._

_Yet he could not shake a sense of distaste for the situation._

_No, not distaste. It was stronger than that. This upset the established norm – the medic had upset the established norm – the thought wound its way through his processor, mixing with the irritation that had already been simmering there, creating some new emotion he could not find a name for. Or rather, he did not wish to find the name for it. Applying a label to that feeling would make it real, tangible – rather than that vague swirl of confliction itching at the back of his helm Yet even without a designation it circulated, accumulating momentum with every second that ticked past. Alarmed and discomforted by this, he cast about for something else, anything else to focus on._

_"You're still delivering messages?"_

_"Yes sir," came the answer, head lifting just a bit, bright blue optics flicking up to look at him. There was a slight intake of air, nearly inaudible. "Just yours, sir."_

_"Mine?" he echoed, all thoughts from a few seconds prior coming to a screeching halt. "You—you're only delivering mine? Why?"_

_She was silent for the longest moment, weight shifting ever so slightly from one leg to the other. Her face plates bore another, less familiar expression—a frown. Not just any frown, but a thoughtful one. Contemplative even._

_"Sir...sir does not hurt this one."_

_This time his stare was much more blatant, stemming from a mild form of shock. It was not the statement itself, but more the implications behind it that surprised him. He felt then a strange sensation, a prickling that seemed to have no point of origin but instead seemed to suddenly encompass his entire spark. As quickly as it had appeared, it faded, but he could still feel it within the background. Briefly, he shuttered his optics trying to figure out what that flare was, what it meant. It did not feel as if it were anything malignant—focusing on it brought forth another, minor wave of similar sensation, laced with the faint tinge of another emotion that took several seconds for him to place._

_Worry._

_He looked back at the courier to find her watching him with an expression of concern. A sudden thought flashed across his processor, troubling but intriguing at the same time—that somehow a connection had been forged between his spark and that of the downcast femme._

_Intriguing, in that what he had felt, what had just occurred, he had never heard or found described anywhere. Granted, his knowledge of the spark was limited to the basic anatomy courses he and his brother had taken in primary education so many vorns ago. Such links did not just form spontaneously. Bonds had to be built over time, sometimes as long as a millenia, for such emotions to be transferred between two sparks. Only the connections forged between bondmates through spark merging were so immediate, but that was to be expected._

_To have such a connection form with almost no contact beyond the halting, often stuttering conversations in his office was unthinkable. And even as this thought crossed his processor another briefly stirred, recalling the night of the memorial for those who had died in the senate bombing. He tensed, spark gripped briefly in terror at the thought that he had somehow done far worse than any of her past abusers had thus far. It faded quickly, as he could recall with some clarity the pain in his helm that morning and the disquieting moments that had followed upon waking._

_Her spark was still her own, he could feel that now. The connection wasn't strong enough to be that of a bondmate. But an absolute certainty grasped his processor as his thoughts returned to the strangeness of the connection, a certainty that this was either not recorded knowledge or something very rare. And such rarity was troubling._

_Troubling—he chose not to focus on that. He did not wish to think what would happen if such a connection was discovered. Instead he turned to his desk, carefully minimalyzing the other threads within his spark one by one. So many were easy to close off, there were not very many bots who were close enough to him to have earned the title of friend. He needn't bother with Sentinel's link, for that was already kept clamped tightly shut. His brother's thread, on the other hand, made him pause._

_He trusted Optimus more than anyone else, but though he felt certain that his brother would be quite willing to help him figure out this situation, he knew that his elder sibling still kept a link open with their creator. Even with the best of intentions, there was a possibility that Sentinel might find out through Optimus. So he closed their link, a small wave of sadness at such a necessity washing through him._

_It echoed, with all his other connections minimalized, and mixed in with the worry emanating from that new thread, destroying all doubt as to where it was coming from. He sat down at his desk and looked at the courier. Her posture now held a note of anxiety—hands clasped together just below her chest plates, shoulders hunched._

_"Where do you recharge?"_

_"Sir?"_

_A slight amount of surprise in her tone; she had not expected the question._

_"Where do you recharge?" he repeated, an idea brewing within his processor. "Where do you stay when not delivering messages or helping the medic?"_

_There was a pause as she glanced down at the floor. Those little knobs on either side of her helm swiveled, nearly rotating all the way around before falling still. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, what had once been attached there._

_"This one was assigned a place in the maintenance level," she finally answered, only barely lifting her head. There was some hesitation before she spoke again, another small flash of worry flickering across that newly formed thread. As it was now the only open link within his spark, it was so much easier to catch. "But…this one has been recharging in the med bay…"_

_"I see."_

_He sat back in his chair, fighting to keep his face expressionless. He had thought himself successful, but the downcast femme seemed to tense in his view, gaze tilting back towards the floor. It was then he realized two things._

_First, that the connection he had sensed was a dual thread. She could detect his emotions just as well as he could hers, though from her reaction he judged that perhaps her end of the connection was a bit stronger._

_Second, that he could now safely label what he felt towards the medic._

_Jealousy._


	20. Cognizant Virtualization

_His workload had doubled._

_Protests over the current system of rationing had begun to make a turn for the worse. There where incidents of rioting in several sectors, which in turn generated an influx of reports, requests for resources, and petitions, all of which needed his direct attention. It was a near unending wave of frustration and, though he tried to work with his brother and their direct subordinates to find a way to mitigate the situation, but the Senate and the High Council refused compromise at every turn._

_He allowed himself only one comfort, though with this flowed different forms of frustration. At first he had warred with the simmering jealousy of the medic, irritation rising at every little instance, every unmentioned but significant thing. Acknowledging the reasons behind his envy would send a wave of guilt through his systems, these bouts ending with a mild depression that could only be cured by the sight of_ _**her** _ _._

_But even being able to look was enough to stir that mixture of possessive ire and contrition. Because while he was happy to see her uninjured, he knew it was the medic repairing her frame, fixing her paint, banishing her pain. And deep within the recesses of his processor there was a monster raging and demanding that this was his domain, and his alone. He tried so very hard to quash it, to silence these feelings so that she would not sense them, but he knew he failed._

_He knew whenever she looked at him._

_Their connection had not faded. If anything it had grown stronger, both of them able to transmit emotions to each other in a way that should not have been possible. He had searched, looking for something, anything to describe this link that had been forged between them despite a gnawing certainty that he would find nothing. In the end he had been correct. The only similar references he had come across were purely fictional in nature, found within the lines of sub par romantic literature._

_His ire, however, would be soothed when her optics turned his way. Through the connection would seep a wordless reassurance. She was always there at the end of the day._

_There in his office._

_Or there in the file room._

_Or there in the small guest berth room he had specifically set up for her._

_Over the past vorn she had become less timid, less fearful, less of a diminutive presence._

_She had fallen out of the habit of referring to herself as 'this one' and, while she still possessed an overall shy personality, she would on occasion speak without prompting. Most times this was to inquire or comment about his well being. Many a late work night, he would glance up from his data pads to find her depositing a fresh energon cube on his desk, with a plea for him to remember to recharge in his berth and not at the desk._

_The desk, upon which sat several new stacks of reports from the latest troubles, all of them with top priority flags. He had picked one up at random, glancing over it with weary optics. All he could remember of it now was the sector from which it had come_ _– Altihex. He had simply dropped his gaze for a moment, only to jerk awake a moment later to a soft touch at his shoulder._

 _She stood there, worry evident in all aspects, holding ou_ _t a cube for him to take. He accepted it, relishing the surge of energy it gave him as he downed it in only a few gulps. It was then he had noticed her hand still on his shoulder, lingering ever so lightly._

_"Please. You'll strain your systems if you keep doing this."_

_"There's only a few more I need to read through for tonight," he protested, gesturing at the desk with a small sweep of his hand. "I'll be fine."_

_She shook her head, unconvinced, lifting her hand from his shoulder only to wrap it around two of his fingers, pulling slightly. His gaze flickered down, settling on her slender fingers, his own reflexively closing around them. He glanced up, optics locking on hers, feeling her concern bleeding through their connection._

_"You need to rest."_

_He relented with a nod, slowly standing from his chair. He kept his hand still twined with hers, let her lead him from the office to his personal quarters. He shuffled to the berth and only then did she pull her hand from his._

_"Please, rest."_

_"Please, stay."_

_The word_ _s came tumbling out without prior filtering, the horrifying realization of what he had asked hitting him not a split second later. It was the exhaustion, breaking down his mental faculties and making it harder for him to curb what he truly wished to say. She was right, he needed to rest, needed to a full night's recharge so such foolishness would not arise up again._

_He was surprised then, when she stepped further into the room, optics skimming over the berth and the surrounding furniture in speculative apprehension before returning to meet his gaze. He'd shuffled back then, making as much room as possible but not daring to hope that she'd accept._

_He watched her, framed by the light in the doorway. It was a soft glow that her armor reflected, dull as it was, but it accented the shadows in such a way that it was impossible to tell. Her optics cast a faint blue light over her face plates, completing an image that his processor could only tag with one adjective at the moment_ _– beautiful. He filed it away, tucking it alongside the memory of her standing at the window, entranced by the sky._

_When she finally moved, he released a rush of air from his intakes that he had not realized he'd been holding. He didn't dare make a movement himself as she climbed onto the berth, fearful that her timidity might make a return appearance. He did not want to see her bolt out of the room like a terrified petrorabbit, the very thought of such an occurrence causing an odd ache in his spark._

_He sank back against the berth, turning his head to stare upwards at the ceiling as she settled down in the space next to him. He lay still for the longest time, simply listening to the quiet hum of his own systems meshing with the sound of hers, so close, so very close. After the longest time, he turned his head to the side._

_She lay within his field of vision, optics shuttered and curled halfway into a ball. Her intakes were nearly inaudible, but he could see the faint movements of her frame indicating their presence. He was struck with the urge to reach out, to stroke her cheek, to assure himself that she really was there, but held himself back._

_He did not wish to wake her._

_He turned his head back towards the ceiling and shuttered his own optics, thoughts drifting as his systems slowed for recharge. They lingered on a conversation from some orns ago, replaying the realization he had come long after the last words had faded from his auditory sensors._

_She was no longer the downcast femme._

_She was no longer the courier._

_She was Skyline._

_And he...he was in love._


	21. Indirection

_He regretted his_ _decision to accompany his brother to Polyhex nearly the very same moment he stepped onto the tram. He'd felt a twist in his spark, a slight pulling sensation, a nagging for attention that became harder and harder to ignore every second that passed by. But ignore it he did, despite wanting so very much to do the opposite._

_He wanted so very badly to turn away from the window._

_He wanted to throw open their connection and tell Optimus everything._

_He wanted the ability to ask all the questions swirling about his processor._

_It was the last item that held him back, the questions. There were so many of them, but they always circled back to that one simple string now connecting him to Skyline. If such a link was discovered, she would be taken away. And Optimus, he did not guard the connections to his spark, letting them fluctuate in time to emotion. Without regulation, these links could be manipulated by outside forces._

_And Sentinel was a master manipulator._

_He hated it, that he let his distrust for their sire affect his brother in such a way. No, it was simple dislike for the situation, not the busybody nature of their sire. His time spent as Protectorate had led him to develop a loathing for Sentinel that bubbled up with every mention of the elder mech. Gone were the days when he had strived to please their sire. There were very few whose opinions mattered to him now, and the fact that the former Prime stood as an effective roadblock to one of them was enough to set him on edge._

_He fought to keep a neutral expression on his face, just barely managing. The tram was moving now and the_ _insistent tug on their connection had died out, though he could feel Optimus looking his way._

_"You've been...busy...as of late," his brother stated soon after they had cleared the station. It was clear by the tone of his voice that work was not the intended topic of conversation, but merely something to break the silence._

_"It's the riots," he muttered, putting on a slightly exasperated tone and leaning back in his seat. "They generate so many reports. All in triplicate. Very detailed."_

_He heaved a sigh, pulling out several of those reports from subspace, having brought them along to serve as a distraction._

_"The Elite Guard Commander enjoys details. It becomes rather tedious at times. Do I really need to know how much gravel was disturbed in minor every scuffle?"_

_This slight amount of exaggeration garnered a small chuckle from his brother. Small, in that gravel had never been mentioned. Everything else was._ _From bystanders and their relatives, the effects of property damages on the already ravaged economy, and notes on the weather; line after line after line._

_"He does like to be thorough," Optimus acknowledged. He saw out the corner of his optics his brother's head shaking from side to side in amusement. "But I think that's a good thing. You never know when a small detail may become a big one."_

_"True, but it becomes so very time consuming having to verify and sign off on every report."_

_"Then I suppose it's a good thing I've torn you away from the capital for awhile. Though I suppose this conference will spawn more reports."_

_"We'll be lucky if it doesn't spawn more than just that," he grumbled, setting his_ _data pads on the tray table in front of him._

 _These were not some random ones he had plucked off of his desk, but reports concerning several incidents of transport ships from their_ _off world mining colonies being attacked in orbit. The investigations were ongoing, but nearly all the leads indicated that those involved had launched from Halicon. The conference he and Optimus were en route to was meant to open a dialogue between Cybertron's main government and the current leadership of the former penitentiary turned prison colony._

 _It had taken some time to convince the Senate to even agree to a meeting. Most of the Senators had never spared a thought for the bots who somehow managed to eke out an_ _existence on the surface of Cybertron's secondary moon. Those who were actually concerned about the situation spent most of their efforts pushing forth militant initiatives, most of which involved an eradication of what they saw as barely sentient protomatter. Adding in the High Council's influence and Sentinel Prime's insistence that those involved in the attacks be punished to the highest extent of the law, despite there being no injuries reported, did not help matters._

_"Halicon isn't likely to stop raiding shipments unless some sort of agreement is reached, and I highly doubt the Senate is willing to compromise."_

_"I'm sure we can get them to see reason."_

_"The way they've been acting, the only reason they'll see will involve the barrel of a gun."_

_His comment was meant by silence, prompting him to glance over at his brother to see an expression of surprise._

_"What?"_

_"I hope you're joking."_

_"And if I'm not?"_

_"I doubt that Halicon will react well to threats of violence."_

_"Who says I was talking about them?"_

_"So what are you suggesting?" his brother asked, face plates forming into a frown. "That we hold the senate hostage until they reach an agreement?"_

_"I'd rather not consult them at all."_

_"We can't simply leave them out of the matter."_

_"And why not?" he inquired, sitting up a bit straighter. Here was something he had longed to discuss, something that irritated him nearly as_ _much as Sentinel's meddling. "All they do is bicker endlessly. And when they do manage to come to a conclusion about something it's nearly always counter to what we initially introduced. Time after time we have tried to reason with them, to change things for the better, yet because of their resistance we've made little to no headway on any of the major issues."_

 _"Many of the senators are stubborn, I'll give you that. But we've always had counsel with the senate, to simply dismiss them_ _—"_

 _"I'm not saying to dismiss them," he cut in, raising a hand in the air. "But as you have stated, their_ _existence is to counsel. To advise. They've been afforded far too much decision making power both in our terms and in the terms of our predecessors. The same can be said of the High Council. How many times have measures you've introduced been blocked by Sentinel's influence?"_

_"Are we not to respect the input of those who've held our very same positions? How can we make wise decisions if we do not consider as many angles as possible?"_

_"_ _I am not suggesting we disregard outside advice, brother. But the final decision is supposed to be ours, not theirs. Must we be so afraid of offending them that we do nothing while the world around us falters?"_

_Optimus stared at him, surprise fading into a far more thoughtful expression._

_"And what then do you suggest we do?" his brother inquired, leaning on the arm of the adjacent seat. "What decision would you hand out, regarding_ _Halicon?"_

 _He tapped a finger on the side of the small stack of reports sitting on the table, falling into thought. Less than a vorn ago, Halicon had been sending envoys to purchase energon direct from the refineries at Kalis. When the High Council had learned of this, they introduced a movement to enforce harsher regulations on the refineries and more restrictions on the current system of rationing. The first raid occurred a few orns after this measure went into effect, so it was pretty much_ _guaranteed that Halicon was in dire need of energon._

 _"Introduce a rewrite into the current rationing system," he said after a moment, lifting his gaze. "Include a percentage of energon to be_ _allotted to Halicon."_

_"That'll go over well."_

_"Yes, I'm sure the senate will be very happy."_

_"We can't just simply hand them a supply of energon and expect things to calm down," Optimus pointed out. "Halicon isn't exactly popular with...well, anyone. You'll have a dozen more reports of riots on your desk in less than a joor."_

_"Which is why, instead of accusing the Halicon representatives of_ _permitting the raids, we ask them to supply escorts for the transports to ensure that these obviously rogue elements do not cause further damage."_

_"An exchange would go over better, though I doubt it will lessen the amount of reports on your desk."_

_He let out a weary sigh, picking up one of the_ _data pads from the table at random_

 _"I doubt_ _anything we do will enable me to escape them any time soon."_

_"It's a good plan," Optimus told him with a nod, reaching across the aisle to pat his shoulder._

_He glanced over, feeling a slight pain in his spark at the warm smile of approval on his brother's face. Turning his gaze back to the_ _data pad, a sensation of guilt began to well up to the surface, overtaking every other thought in his processor._

 _He stared at the lines marking the screen of the report in his hand, the words refusing to translate. Out of the corner of his optic he saw his brother take out a few_ _data pads as well, no doubt having brought along a few things to work on during their trip just as he had. A sudden certainty hit him then, the content of their discussion circulating back through his processor._

_It was a turning point, he was sure of it._

_They would change things, the both of them._


	22. Disharmony

"I was such a fool."

He did not turn his head to look at Optimus. He did not need to do so to know that his brother was listening. It was another trait he admired of his elder sibling, the ability to simply sit patiently with open auditory sensors. That innate sense of when to speak and when to just be there, silent and understanding.

"I spent so much effort learning how to lie to you, over an imagined distrust," he spoke towards the ceiling, at the space just a few centimeters above where the light had been. The area was still scorched, still blackened and broken. Like his armor, no one had bothered trying to fix it. "I allowed my distaste for Sentinel cloud my judgment...and look what became of it."

He made a gesture with his lone remaining hand, slicing through the air in a wide arc, indicating the world at large.

"What I sought to protect...is gone. And the world we had...imperfect as it was...it is the same. Broken and lost."

"That isn't true."

He turned his helm to the side, the expression on his brother's face just as he had expected it to be, a mix of stubbornness and determination. A small surge of affection rose up in his spark at this. For all his elder sibling's uncertainty in other areas, it was the unending confidence in making things better that shined through the most.

"Always the optimist."

"One of us has to be."

He chuckled, though his amusement faded quickly, the brief distraction not enough to tear him away from his current line of thinking.

"There is one thing that will never be fixed," he stated, optics falling shuttered as he turned his head away. "No matter what either of us may do…"

"Anything may be fixed, brother, given enough time and the proper tools."

"No."

His intakes rattled, drawing in far more of the atmosphere than his damaged systems would normally allot.

"You will never trust me again."

He felt the surprise through their bond, followed swiftly by a wave of tangled emotions that mirrored the ones swirling through his own spark. The truth of his words couldn't be denied, as proven by the silence that followed him. No matter what Optimus may claim to the contrary, the trust they had once shared was forever shattered.

There was no repairing it.

His optics snapped back open at the sound of the door opening, the sudden presence of another cutting through any continuance of the conversation at hand. The masked mech—Wheeljack, he reminded himself—ambled through, pulling a cart upon which sat a peculiar looking machine. It appeared to be something akin to the scanner that had been used to determine the state of his memory core, but there were several modifications made to it of a type he could not discern. In fact, many of the additional components appeared to have been hastily welded on. The cart was followed by Ratchet, looking slightly more irate than appeared to be usual.

"Oh good, you're here," Wheeljack commented brightly upon spotting Optimus, the fins attached to either side of his helm flashing in an almost excited manner. "You can be the control group."

"Control group?"

The unease suddenly flowing through his brother's connection only served to magnify his own. If Optimus was wary of something being presented by one of his own subordinates, then that most definitely meant that the situation, whatever it might be, was not exactly desirable. The fact that his brother was looking at the device on the cart as if it might explode was also somewhat disconcerting.

"I'm going to run a scan on his spark. I'll need something to compare the data to, and since you are currently the only other bot on base with a bond mate..."

"That does not look like the type of scanner usually used on sparks," Optimus pointed out, staring at the machine for a moment longer before glancing at Ratchet. "What is going on?"

"He has a theory," the medic responded, looking rather irritated by the mere possibility. "An extremely idiotic theory, but a theory non-the-less."

He raised his head up off the table a bit, uneasy taking a back seat to curiosity. It seemed to have struck his brother as well, though it was accompanied by a mild sense of—dread. He glanced sideways at Optimus, only to find his elder sibling's expression unreadable.

"Explain."

"Well…Ratchet had asked me to assist him," Wheeljack responded, audial fins flickering in time to the words. The masked mech spoke even as the machine was being set up, dials and buttons being pressed in patterns that could not be discerned from the his angle lying down on the table. "So...I was looking through the general archives—"

"Which are oh so much more informative than the _**MEDICAL**_ archives on a _**MEDICAL**_ matter," the medic ground out, leveling a glare at the masked mech that would probably sent many a lesser bot running for their lives. To Wheeljack, however, the comment and it's accompanying scowl was waved off.

"—and discovered a rather abstract reference to something similar to the current situation."

"And by abstract, he means purely fictitious," Ratchet clarified, optics flicking briefly upwards towards the ceiling. "Fictitious and entirely unfounded—"

"Not unfounded, there were a few legitimate cases-"

"Unverified second-hand accounts do not qualify as legitimate."

"Have you found anything?"

There was a prolonged silence as the medic stood there fuming, shoulders hunched and arms folded tightly over chest plates in a stance that very much looked like that of a youngling on the verge of a temper tantrum. It was an amusing but terrifying visual.

"Alright fine," Ratchet grumbled after a few grinding seconds, glancing away. "But it does not fit the situation."

"Why not?"

"His sparkmate is dead. By all rights, he should be dead too. Harmonization, if even such a thing exists— which it doesn't—would not change that."

"Connections between sparks have been shown to have varying effects on the linked parties, pending on the type of bond. The effects of a harmonized bond between two spark mates may have energy properties well beyond that of a normal one."

"This is an insane assertion, even for you," the medic grouched, head shaking from side to side. "If—and this is a big if—such a thing were even possible, it would not explain the fact that _**he**_ is still functioning."

A hand was waved in his general direction, though this appeared to be the only acknowledgement either of the two mechs were willing to make that they were not, in fact, left alone to argue things out. Though his brother did not seem very inclined to step in and remind them of their audience.

"I'm getting to that part," Wheeljack interjected, not seeming to be concerned much with the medic's continued irritability. Whether this was an indicator of distraction or the fact that the masked mech was simply used to the aura of pervasive grouchiness was not immediately decipherable. "The general description of harmonization does not present much data beyond emotional connections—"

"Because every description is an excerpt pulled directly from poorly written and—might I remind you— _ **fictitious**_ romance novellas."

"—but imply that the effects of a typical bond are increased tenfold. So…what are the known effects of a bond between sparkmates? Or I should say, what are the facets of that particular connection that are unique?"

At this question, the masked mech turned to look at Optimus, who seemed mildly surprised and inwardly embarrassed to be so suddenly called upon.

"When one dies, the other does as well."

All optics turned briefly to him, though he barely noticed, thoughts flickering to those memories so recently recovered. He did catch the slight change in expression on his brother's face, though—a minor shift in the optic ridges. A faint swirl of sadness flickered across their link, though he wasn't certain if it belonged to Optimus or was generated by his own minute reminiscence.

"Right," the masked mech confirmed with a small nod. "And this implies not only a stronger connection, but also transference of energy. This is a confirmed trait, which coincides with synchronized energy fields and the generation of complimentary spark frequencies. All of which develops after the initial merge."

There was a pause, in which a data pad was picked up from atop the cart.

"Now, I've taken stored data scans from the medical archives on spark bonds—just the numbers, mind you, not names or anything like that."

This second half was added upon the sudden intensification of the continual glare that the medic had aimed in Wheeljack's general direction.

"And with those numbers amplified to the amount implied by the description of harmonization, a pattern takes shape."

The data pad was held out towards the medic, who took it without so much as saying a word. The scowl on the reflective green bot's face plates remained in place even as the screen was read through.

"This proves nothing," Ratchet said, sour expression unmoving. "Even if you happen to be right and he is displaying the traits of a harmonized spark—"

"I think they both were harmonized."

"Impossible!"

"Improbable."

"Look, even you know that not everything about the spark has been fully documented," Wheeljack pointed out, picking up the scanner apparatus attached to the device on the cart and inspecting it. "I realize that it is a long shot explanation, but you're the one who told me to find one. So I did and here we are."

"What is harmonization, then?" Optimus inquired as Wheeljack moved closer to the table, scanner initializing.

"It is a—

"Purely theoretical."

"—condition of the spark, in which an individual spark takes on the characteristics and frequencies of a spark bond when no bond has ever been formed."

There was a faint sensation across his spark chamber, as if something were just barely touching over the sensors there. It was just on the verge of becoming uncomfortable, though he did not give voice to that fact. Instead his processor was suddenly racing, recent retrospection resurfacing.

"The symptoms, do they include the exhibition of the connection itself?" he asked as the masked mech turned to look at the screen attached to the scanning device. "Such as the traits you listed?"

"Yes."

"I think you may be correct in your theory."

"Great," Ratchet muttered, hand going to helm as if attempting to thwart off a sudden processor ache. "Now you've put that idea in his head, he'll never be rid of it."

"We'll see after I've run both sets of data," Wheeljack responded, turning the scanner towards Optimus. His brother was more transparent about the effects of the scan, frame shuddering and a whirl of discomfort leaking through their connection. It was over with quickly though, and the masked mech was once again monitoring the screen, the hand-held portion of the device set aside for the moment, though a glance was thrown briefly in his direction after a few seconds. "Tell me why you think that I am right."

"As you surmised the other day, my memory files are recovering somewhat," he stated, being very careful not to look anywhere near the direction of the medic. "The more recently restored ones center around the femme whom I believe to have become my sparkmate, though at a point in time when I know we were not bonded."

"And…?"

"I could sense her emotions, her proximity…and she—she reacted to my emotions despite there being no outward indicators."

"I see…"

He felt a hand on his shoulder, reassurance leaking through his link to Optimus. Having relayed his latest recovered memories to his brother earlier had been troubling, had felt as if he was confessing some great crime when in reality his actions in those past moments should have been but a trifling thing. Echoing even a minor detail brought back that crushing sense of loss, and, though he was glad for his brother's unshakable determination to see the bright side of things, he couldn't push aside the pain of guilt eating away at his spark.

He noticed Wheeljack gesturing for Ratchet to move in to take a look at whatever data was being displayed. The medic did not appear to be very happy upon reading it over, glowering down at the screen as if it offered up something highly offensive.

"This proves nothing."

"It proves that there is an external variable keeping his spark from extinguishing," the masked mech argued, tapping at the screen. "One that is operating on a sub-spatial level."

"Which could be anything."

"Please, there are only three things theorized to operate as such. One of them is destroyed, the second one is proven to drive bots insane, and the third could be proven to exist right now if you would stop being a stubborn glitch about it."

"Triple-changers do not operate on a sub-spatial level," Ratchet grumbled, expression morphing back to mere annoyance. "And neither do spark bonds."

"Then, via process of elimination, the only thing that could be keeping him functioning is residual Allspark energy."

There was a silent tension that accumulated in the air just after Wheeljack's final words died away. It was visible, in that both the medic and his brother stood straighter, their frames shifting almost imperceptibly. He found that they were not looking at him nor the masked mech, but at what remained of his chest plates sitting on the table at the back of the room, their charred edges creating an uneven shadow across the wall. He turned his head to look at them, a frown creeping its way across his own face plates.

He saw the way the metal was warped, as if something had burnt through it. The once shining silver surface gone twisted grey and black—the seconds dragged on as he stared, phantom pain flickering across the disconnected sensors of his armor, almost mirroring the sensation of the scan from just a few minutes earlier. Just as centered, just as focused, just as if a slight bu _rst_ _of_ _energy_ _had_ _pulsed_ _against_ _his_ _chest_ _plates._ _He_ _tried,_ _in_ _a_ _last_ _fleeting_ _moment_ _of_ _clarity,_ _to_ _sweep_ _his_ _arm_ _inwards,_ _claws_ _scraping_ _over_ _the_ _asphalt_ _only_ _to_ _clench_ _open_ _air_ _mere_ _centimeters_ _from_ _the_ _intended_ _target._ _It_ _was_ _a_ _mere_ _mockery_ _of_ _a_ _movement,_ _his_ _sensor_ _net_ _scrambled_ _in_ _that_ _initial_ _flash_ _of_ _light._ _Every_ _point_ _in_ _his_ _neural_ _network_ _gave_ _out_ _in_ _favor_ _of_ _sheer_ _agony._

_He had reacted too late._

_Too late._

_Too late._


	23. Synchroneity

_Returning to Iacon after the meetings with Halicon was a welcome relief, though one he knew would not last for long. They had barely managed to strike a deal that would have some semblance of working, but he doubted that the bargain agreed upon by the Senators would last even two orns. Despite the authority by which he and his brother had spoken, despite their insistence at a peaceful resolution, many of the Senators still seemed very, very reluctant. Someone was bound to break the agreement, and he was more than willing to bet that it wasn't going to be Halicon._

_A soft chime as the elevator slowed to a stop called his attention away from these thoughts. He raised his helm, very briefly glancing at the panel to determine that it was the correct floor. A reflexive motion, really. It was so extremely late in the evening that even the maintenance workers must have retired._

_The door slid open and he stepped out into the entryway of his office. Having expected the room to be dark, it therefore came as a surprise to see a sliver of light cutting an angled path across his desk. He frowned, moving further into the room, optics flicking to follow the light to its source. The file room door was ajar, just a crack, barely half a centimeter of space to allow the light through._

_He crossed over to it, reaching out a hand to push the door open. It slid aside with barely any sound, light flooding out as more space to escape was presented. He paused, optics taking a brief moment to adjust._

_The file room's previous state of disarray was gone. He had never given much thought to organizing it, having simply placed data pads wherever he could find space for them. This had often led to some falling out onto the floor when others were removed or haphazard stacks left on the tops of the shelves. While this made it difficult to find things when he needed them again, such incidents were rare enough that the frustration wrought from searching was not sufficient to motivate him to straighten the room himself._

_But now..._

_Now the floor was clear and the shelves neatly arranged, data pads carefully slotted in with their labels facing outwards. There were no more random stacks perched precariously on the tops of the shelves and everything appeared to be clear of dust. It was a transformation that left him momentarily stunned._

_His shuttered his optics briefly, feeling slightly guilty for having allowed the room to become such a mess. To have fixed it back up again had to have taken up an enormous amount of time and effort. Time and effort he'd never considered worth exerting on his own._

_He snapped his head upwards at that thought, gaze scanning the room again. Finding what he sought near the back shelves, a faint splash of blue against the darker greys of the room, he started to move forward only to freeze again when her frame came fully into view._

_The first thing he noticed was the data pad held limply in one hand, barely a few centimeters above the floor. The translucent material of its surface rested against the plating of her thigh, the shadow of it darkening her paint. The upper portion of her frame was draped over the top of a small step stool, helm resting on the crook of her other arm. There was a small stack of data pads nearby, the top one slightly off center._

_Slowly, he knelt down, optics never leaving her frame. The light here and at this angle, washed away most of the dullness from her paint. The uneven patches that covered her scars had receded, leaving behind only the blue, soft and pale. There was a faint sound, barely audible, of her intakes - rhythmic and calm. Her face, so often graced with expressions of worry or nervousness, was just as serene._

_He was struck then by the sudden urge to reach out, only just barely managing to reign in the impulse. Fingers flexing, he bowed his helm, cycling air through his intakes in a heavy sigh._

_"Sky..."_

_The quiet that followed was so deafening, he was not certain if he had even spoken at all or if it had just been in his processor. But then he saw the faint flickering as her optics onlined, slowly focusing in the light. Her helm lifted up from where it rested, drowsy gaze shifting at once to him._

_He just stared, gaze locked with hers, wanting to say something, anything to express the mixture of emotions currently waging war in spark. But his vocalizer was rebelling against him, refusing to cooperate. Her expression shifted, matching the sudden nervousness swirling through their connection._

_"I...I was trying to finish," she explained softly, breaking the silence as she sat up straighter, raising the data pad in her hand up to her chest like a makeshift shield. Any and all grogginess from her interrupted recharge seemed to have faded. "To fix everything before you returned."_

_Her gaze fell to the data pad briefly and she shifted, turning to find its spot on the shelf._

_"I wanted to surprise you."_

_Set in its place, she moved to pick up the next one but was stopped when his hand caught hers just above the stack._

_This time he had followed the impulse as soon as it struck, fingers curling over hers. Slowly, he leaned forward, raising her hand up to brush his lips over the thin plating that covered the knuckle joints. He heard the sharp intake of air as he did so, a gasp of fear or surprise, he couldn't discern. Possibly a mixture of both, but even with their link it was nigh impossible to tell if the emotions now lancing his spark were his own or otherwise._

_He lowered her hand, fingers loosening enough so that she could pull it free if she wished to do so. He kept his helm bowed, still leaning forward slightly, not daring to raise his gaze. The thought of seeing terror in her optics kept him frozen in place._

_Fear was the very last thing he wanted to see gracing her face right then._

_Very briefly, his thoughts flickered to the memory of her gazing out the window. That peaceful expression, the lack of tension in her shoulders and the way the light touched her frame. A faint reflection in the glass and her helm turning so very slightly as she tracked the paths of the aerial patrols as they flew past. He felt a sense of loss then, that his actions just now - simple and impulsive and so very foolish in his mind -may have cost him even that small glimpse into such beauty._

_Her hand shifted, fingertips brushing lightly over his palm, pausing to hover just barely there for what seemed to be eternity. Then that faint touch slid down, slipping neatly between the spaces of his own digits. Slowly, he lifted his helm, optics hesitantly flicking upwards to focus on her face._

_What he saw was not fear, not worry, not sadness._

_What he saw was a smile and it was the most beautiful thing in the universe._


	24. Metasyntactic Variability

_The building belonging to the High Council was one of the oldest in Iacon, so old that its architectural style could be safely labeled as archaic. There were columns several hundred feet high, covered with relief carvings of the original thirteen and a spiral of ancient Cybertronian marks that went all the way up to the roof. With four columns in all, they told the story of Creation, the First Golden Age, the Fall of the Thirteen, and the Gift of the Matrix of Leadership. They were a must see sight for any aspiring historian or visitor to the capitol, always drawing a crowd._

_He did not find them as awe inspiring as he once had, vorns ago when he and his brother had first visited. They had always loved the stories, had always begged for Dualpoint and Blackjack to retell them at every chance. Optimus in particular had a love of history, often taking trips to the archives to read whatever could be found and making fast friends with the head archivist. Often, he would sit up late at night listening to his brother reading from the history datapads. It had been a calming ritual, one that ceased only after they had each taken their final upgrades._

_After that, he had gone straight into the Aerial Forces, while Optimus had trained with the Elite Guard in addition to beginning to work towards taking over the position of Prime from Sentinel. There had been no room for stories then or any time since._

_Today they had been summoned to Sentinel's office in the High Council Chambers, something that he had tried very hard to avoid. But this was an issue that they had to confront, for the deal brokered with Halicon was fragile and the members of the High Council would no doubt try to cause as much friction as possible. He walked a step and half behind Optimus, mentally preparing for any arguments their sire would throw their way despite knowing just how futile it was trying to reason with Sentinel. The former Prime was far too stubborn and any concessions that might be made by the older mech were never what they appeared to be._

_Optimus glanced briefly at him as they approached Sentinel's office, the sound of their sire's voice carrying out past the door. They paused to listen, more out of curiousity than anything else._

_"I understand your concerns, Helix. But I hardly think it will come to that."_

_"But if it does..."_

_"If it does, and you have the evidence for it, then by all means, bring it to me. Then and only then will I take action. I will not act on mere hearsay. Especially not when your main source is some chemically addled maintenance worker."_

_"Very well," Helix stated. "I shall conduct a more thorough investigation."_

_They stepped back from the door just as it opened and the white armored form of Helix stepped through. The scientist cast them a sideways glance, one optic ridge arcing upwards ever so slightly before turning to throw a glance back into the office._

_"I do believe your next meeting is here, Sentinel."_

_"Then send them in."_

_Helix smiled a smile that did not quite reach the optics, stepping aside and making an exaggerated gesture towards the door. The scientist's gaze flicked over him briefly, in an almost calculative manner. He returned it with an annoyed glare before following his brother inside, the door snapping shut behind him._

_Sentinel stood at the desk, expression just one notch below neutral, the very slight tilt of the optic ridges giving away the former Prime's mood. Disappointment and annoyance, perhaps, though he could not know for certain without opening their link, something he had not done in vorns and was not planning to do ever again. Too many times had Sentinel used that connection to influence the two of them to agree on whatever motion the High Council wanted to push forward. He and his brother had learned by now to keep a high amount of skepticism and suspicion when regarding their sire. He did not need to look at Optimus to know that his brother was wearing the same guarded expression as himself._

_"There are two items I wish to discuss," Sentinel stated in a tone so serene it was nearly eerie. "First and foremost, your decision to strike a deal with Halicon without input from the High Council."_

_"A necessary decision," he responded, taking the initiative in answering as the deal had been his idea in the first place. "Considering that the last time we consulted you on something similar your response came...oh, three vorns later. During which time Vos and Tarn drew three other sectors into their conflict, rendering the initial proposal obsolete. There was not time to wait."_

_"Vos is a recognized sovereign body and entitled to every consideration. Halicon can not be equated as anything close to similar."_

_"And whose fault is that? They've been petitioning for recognition for vorns but every time we present a case for the senate, you and your_ _**council** _ _interrupt with excuse after excuse."_

_"I will not sit back and watch you ruin the integrity of our-"_

_"Integrity? How can our integrity be broken any more than it already is with the lies being peddled about your mining endeavors. Our citizens operate at bare minimum capacity with only a thin thread of hope that this next site will yield enough for rationing to be lifted. How many times have you made that promise only for it to be broken due to overestimation?"_

_Now Sentinel was glaring, as tended to be the case in any discussion with the mech, but at this point, he did not care. He'd seen the reports for Vegna Seven, had done his own calculations on the proposed yields and the numbers being reported by the holonews channels did not match the ones that his investigation had yielded. He'd suspected that Sentinel was twisting the numbers, though he hadn't seen any logic as to why._

_But now a realization unfurled itself within his processor, spreading and unfolding to reveal an ugly over-reaching web of connections. Sentinel, and most likely the rest of the High Council, was purposefully acting to suppress accurate information concerning the mining expeditions. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way, in order to maintain a system that was tightly controlled. The rationing had been in effect for so many vorns that it had become a normalcy, and with distribution of energon run by those that Sentinel himself had placed in office, the High Council effectively held Cybertron in their grip._

_"How many sites have you denied the permits for where the yield was too high?" he asked, locking gazes with Sentinel. Out the corner of his optic he registered his brother glancing at him with a surprised expression. Evidently, Optimus hadn't yet reached the same conclusion he had. "I know at least Koros V was declared bunk, but I'm certain it's not the only one."_

_"How dare you accuse me-"_

_"Why else would you be so keen to refuse Halicon aid? Granting them trade rights would affect the distribution numbers you so avidly keep watch over, wouldn't it?"_

_"He has a point," Optimus agreed, finally speaking up and fixing their sire with a frown. "What is lost in helping them? You can not simply continue to refuse based on claims against their ancestry."_

_"I make my claims based on their current actions! They raid our ships and then make demands of us?"_

_"What choice do they have, they are starving!"_

_"As will our own citizens," Sentinel retorted, now beginning to sound angry. "Keep your agreement with them and you will see. Within the vorn there will be shortages!"_

_"Within a vorn I will have my own teams inspecting the sites you and your advisors declared non-viable," he retorted, stepping forward and squaring his shoulders. "And hopefully we'll be able to repair the damages you've done."_

_"Damages? You do not get to speak to me of damages when your own_ _**pet** _ _projects jeapordize progress."_

_At this Sentinel picked up one of the many datapads on the desk, thrusting it towards Megatron with an expression half angered and half disgusted. He took it, more out of reflex than anything else, glancing down to see that it contained the draft of his proposal for reformation of the processing and tracking of downcasts. He had spent several orns revising it, and then passed it on to Optimus for review._

_"Why do you have this?"_

_"Your brother came to speak to me on some of the details an orn ago," Sentinel explained as he glanced back at Optimus, who sported an expression of uncertainty. "There are reasons why this system is in place, as you very well know. But you would pardon them, these murderers, these scum? You would let them roam the streets again?"_

_"That is not what I was proposing."_

_"I'm sorry, but there is no amount of polish that can reframe it."_

_"You've ignored the specifications I've set, the review system-"_

_"-needs work, but is perfectly viable," Optimus cut in, stepping up to take the datapad from him. His brother did not look at him, perhaps feeling guilty for having allowed the proposal to reach Sentinel too early in the revision process. "It will take time and resources to set it up, but I think it will work out for the better in the long run."_

_"And what will you do to replace the workforce supplied by the ones you wish to free? Drones? Paid labor? You have not thought this through."_

_"The alternative is to continue a system that is inherently corrupt."_

_"How very short-sighted you two have become," Sentinel commented, turning away from them towards the windows of his office. "I thought I had raised you better than this."_

_To this he let out a slight laugh, hollow and somewhat bitter._

_"You didn't raise us at all, Sentinel," he stated, not bothering to keep the bitterness from his voice as he moved to leave. "And I am glad of it."_


	25. Harmonic Fragmentation

_"I did not know he would bring that up, brother," Optimus stated as they passed through the atrium of Central Tower to return to their offices. "I only went to ask him about the facilities, to gain a better insight on where and how your ideas could be implemented. I meant no harm by it."_

_"I know, Optimus," he replied as they paused before the elevators. "I was just...surprised. I thought that you would have asked or at least warned me that you were going to speak to him of it."_

_"I-I'm sorry. You're right; I should have spoken to you first. I guess I was simply being far too optimistic on his reception of the idea."_

_"He's never accepted any of our ideas without complaint, brother. Why would this time be any different?"_

_"I don't know," Optimus answered, head shaking and gaze falling to the floor. "But I hope this one will work out for the better."_

_"As do I, as do I."_

_The elevator arrived and they both stepped in, doors sliding shut as Optimus pressed the buttons for their respective floors. He glanced at his brother then, as silence fell between them for a moment. The urge to reach out through their link rose up, if only to offer some small assurance that he wasn't angry, wanting to be rid of the other's slumped posture and faint look of worry._

_But as much as he wanted to renew their connection, today had simply reaffirmed many of his own fears. How could he trust Optimus to keep his link with Skyline a secret? How, when if his brother's first action concerning his project was to consult their sire, even when he had hinted at not wanting it revealed so soon? He turned his gaze away, shifting his stance and clasping his hands behind his back, expression setting into one of grim determination._

_He was not angry, no._

_He was disappointed and it seemed that though he had kept his end of their bond tightly closed, his brother had picked up on it. They arrived at the first stop, and Optimus looked at him, expression almost pleading. But he did not relent, but simply nodded his helm slightly in farewell._

_"Until tomorrow, brother."_

_Optimus returned the nod, a faint sadness in his expression as he stepped out. The doors slid shut, obscuring his brother from view. He bowed his helm. For the first time since he had withdrawn from their link, his spark began to ache. His intakes stuttered, and he let his optics fall shut, waiting for it to fade._

_And in that moment he felt a faint swirl of puzzlement and worry flowing along that lone link to Skyline. The elevator stopped once more as he lifted his helm, the doors sliding open to reveal his office. He saw her peeking out from the door to the archive room, one hand resting lightly on the frame as she looked towards him, expression concerned. Stepping into the room, he tried to push the pain away, not wanting to bring his issues with his brother to this space._

_But this did nothing to banish the worry in Skyline's optics as she left the doorframe of the archive room to meet him. She stopped there in front of him and he watched as she lifted a hand up to brush her fingers over his chest plates. That faint touch sent a pleasant shiver through his frame, but otherwise he remained motionless, still somewhat afraid of scaring her off._

_"I'm not afraid."_

_He blinked, surprised by such an unprompted and definite statement on her part. He stared down at her, unable to find anything to say in response. She pulled her hand from his chest and instead slipped it into his, twining their fingers together as they had been a few nights before._

_"Not of you," she clarified, the tone of her voice soft and reassuring. "Not anymore."_

_His intakes hitched, catching and a clicking. Slowly, he sank down to his knees, vaguely aware that doing so barely affected their difference in height. He moved as if in a dream, acting on a desire that he'd been so carefully holding back – arms wrapping around Skyline's slim frame and pulling her in close to his own. She tilted her head, lightly resting the side of her helm against his chest plates. He wondered if she could hear just how rapidly his spark was pulsing, auditory proof of his nervousness._

_But she was calm; he could feel it over their link, a soft serenity that soon bled through, soothing his anxiety._

_A kind of desire now rose to the forefront of his thoughts at that moment and he could not help but shutter his optics as it brought with it imagery he'd tried to suppress. It was no longer possible to push it away, not with the tangibility of her thin plating against his own. He wanted to feel more of it, to memorize every curve, every seam, every edge._

_He found himself moving, shifting and ducking his head to press his lips against her helm, just above the right optic ridge. Her backplates slid past under the digits of one hand, the contours burning lines into his processor. His servo stopped at the little notches just under her shoulder plating, a thumb tracing that particular edge for a moment. This motion drew out a faint gasp - a nearly inaudible expellation of air through the intakes - coupled with a swirl of emotions that could only be described as confused pleasure._

_That sound by itself was the most beautiful thing he had heard, but its accompaniment caused his spark to roil in its casing. It echoed ever other instance of fury he'd ever felt at those who had caused her pain, but in this instance it came coupled with a burning need to give her every comfort, every pleasure, every happiness that he could muster._

_His optics snapped open to the faint sen_ sationof her lips brushing over his chestplates, shaped into a smile, a warmth bleeding through their connection that swiftly filled his entire frame. The cold metal of the medical berth against his backstruts was a sharp constrast, drawing him cruelly from the memory. But he held that moment in his grasp, willing it to the forefront of his processor. It played there, filtering through like an antique holovid. There were so many little things that stuck out, that resonated and solidified all that he had imagined to be real as actually real.

The slight weight of her frame curled up in his arms as he carried her.

The way her optics fell almost nearly shut when they kissed.

The brightness of her spark, a crystalline blue that left a soft glow across the rest of her plating.

He shuttered his optics, replaying every instance with a reverance akin to worship. Here was the memory of that hesitant first touch between their sparks, of their cores meeting and merging, completing their connection in a way that he had no hope of being able to describe. For an instant he felt happiness, for here was the moment he had wished to know - the certainty that Skyline was his sparkmate.

And then came a pain, sudden and sharp. His spark contracted, clenching in an agony that had his frame arching up of the berth. He snapped a hand over his spark chamber, a strangled shriek tearing itself from his vocalizer. But just as quickly as the pain arrived, it vanished, leaving behind a dull ache. He lay there, intakes heaving as a kind of certainty fueled by despair settled itself like a heavy duty thermal blanket over his processer.

She was gone.


	26. Anachronic

He was not sure how much time had passed between his waking and the door sliding open again, but it must not have been very long. Optimus appeared in his field of vision, expression mirroring the concern now sweeping through their link. His brother must have felt at least an echo of the pain that had seized his spark in its grip and, like all those times he'd accidentally injured himself as a youngling, had come running.

It struck him then just how easily it would be - must have been - to manipulate such a reaction. How simple, to just pretend, to use his brother's empathy as a tool to bring the elder mech down. He shuddered, feeling disgusted with himself in thinking it and yet he knew with an unerring certainty that he had done this. He had used everything that he had in his power to hurt Optimus.

Nothing had been held sacred.

Nothing.

And still his brother forgave him. He did not know what would finally break the apparent endless fountain of compassion that Optimus seemed to hold for the universe at large, but he was deathly certain he never wished to find out.

"Are you alright?"

The question was laced with concern, making him well aware that there was still a lingering pain within his spark, echoing through their connection.

"No," he answered, voice sounding dull and weary to his own auditory sensors. "I do not think that I will ever be 'alright' again."

He stared up at the ceiling and the scorch marks still decorating it, not wanting to look at his brother's face or see the worried expression he knew would be there. If he did so, he felt it might attract that pain again. He'd rather feel nothing than that agonizing despair still lurking in the shadows of his processor.

But still, he felt too that he owed Optimus an explanation - owed him everything, in all actuality - and it was that which prompted him to continue speaking.

"I can remember her so acutely, so accurately. But she is gone and that fact hurts more than I could possibly describe."

"I see..."

"No, you don't!" he snapped out, intending to argue but the venom suddenly saturating those words shocked him. He brought his hand up to cover his face, shuttering his optics and wincing at the clawed tips that skimmed over his brow. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Don't apologize for that, brother," Optimus said, and he felt a weight on his shoulder - his brother's hand, offered in reassurance once again. "You're right. I have never lost anyone so dear to my spark, I do not know that pain...but I would not be so certain that she is gone."

"Don't give me false hopes, Optimus."

"It is not a false hope. Remember what Wheeljack was saying, about harmonization?"

"Yes, I remember," he muttered, dropping his hand and taking in a stuttering, shaky intake. "I remember distinctly that your medic concluded that it was naught but a fantasy, an impossibility. He seemed to think the only explanation..."

He paused, glancing at the table on the far end of the room where his melted chest plates still lay. The hand on his shoulder constricted slightly, tension and uncertainty leaking through from his brother's end of their link. He knew now what had caused the damage, that scrap of a memory of that last moment lurking about his processor. The emotions attached to it - anger, possessiveness, desperation - felt strange and disconnected, like they belonged to someone else entirely.

Deciphering those feelings took a moment, as there was barely any context behind them to go on, but he tried to do so anyway. He had wanted the Allspark to be in his possession, that much was painfully clear. 

But why?

"I do not think the Allspark is the reason for your rapid recovery," his brother's voice cut through his thoughts, drawing his attention away from the warped metal that had been his chest plates. He looked back at his brother, the concern and determination in those bright blue optics somewhat overwhelming. "There have been times during...during the course of the war, in which you sustained grave injury. Injuries that would have killed any other bot, and yet time and again you recovered. The Allspark could not have been what kept you alive then, nor could it have re-ignited your spark."

The Allspark - Avatar of Primus himself - source of all Cybertronian life and perhaps the most powerful artifact in the known universe, was said to be capable of many things, though many tales of its abilities were exaggerated. It could generate newsparks, yes, though only a fraction of those who went before it with this purpose were granted a sparkling. It was said that this was the will of Primus, but there had been some who suspected that there were other explanations for the frequency of newspark generation. It was said that the Allspark could also heal the sick and grant sacred wisdom from Primus himself. This was demonstrably false, though that did not stop visitors from flocking to the Temple at Simfur in hopes of miracles.

They had visited the Temple, first in awe as younglings and later, with less reverence, as adults. Or at least he'd held less reverence. Optimus had been the picture of respect and perhaps held more strongly to the belief that Primus himself still inhabited the Allspark, or at least still powered it. He, on the other hand, thought that if Primus had existed, the god had abandoned the ancient reliquary long before either of them had been sparked. What residual power contained within was just an echo of an older, different era. 

"So you believe Wheeljack in this? That this harmonization theory of his is correct?"

"Yes."

"Then where is she?"


	27. Reversion

                "Sam has been talking to Lennox," the human female – Mikaela, he reminded himself – stated. She was sitting on the edge of one of the tables in the medical bay and watching as Wheeljack adjusted the settings on his makeshift spark scanner. There had been some major and somewhat sinister looking adjustments made to it since the last time it had been used. Optimus stood nearby, having assisted in moving him into the main medical bay at the engineer's request. The human had arrived a few minutes prior, and – from what he could discern from her tone and posture – was projecting an aura of deep concern. "They both know something's going on. Especially after Ironhide showed up acting a hell of a lot surlier than usual."

                He did not know who the other humans she was speaking of, though he recalled she had mentioned the one designated 'Sam' during their previous encounter. Optimus, however, seemed to be deeply concerned, he could feel it through their link.

                "What exactly happened?"

                "Well, Ironhide caught Bumblebee sneaking in here for a peek," Wheeljack answered before anyone else could, the fins on either side of the engineer's helm lighting up in time to each syllable. "He wasn't entirely happy about this situation in the first place and I guess that was the tipping point. He is kind of...protective of Bumblebee..."

                "I would have never guessed," he muttered dryly, the statement garnering a stern look from Optimus. "What? He shot me. Am I not allowed to make observations?"

                "Ironhide shot you?"

                The human female was leaning forward, elbows braced on her knees.

                "Pointblank."

                "And you're still not dead?"

                "A problem we are trying to solve, I assure you," he retorted, making a small gesture towards Wheeljack with his hand. He did not miss the slight wince from the engineer at the movement nor the twinge of pain that traveled over his connection to Optimus.

                He might have felt guilty for the comment at least, but for the truth inherent to the statement. Wheeljack's tests had been authorized only because they might lead to insight into how to extinguish his spark for good. He had been given the option to refuse them, as the engineer had explained that such an invasive scan of his spark would be quite painful. His agreement had been immediate, as the results might answer the many questions still burning at the back of his processor.

                "Okay...what are you doing, Wheeljack?"

                "Well, I've modified the scanners used for detecting spark anomalies," the engineer answered, picking up several electrodes and beginning to attach them to the scarred surface of his spark chamber. The sensation was novel - many of the sensors were numb but a few active ones reported pressure and a tickling sort of itch. "His spark has exhibited some qualities that are definitely anomalous. Such as spontaneous re-ignition."

                "Spontaneous re-ignition?"

                "Yes."

                "But Ratchet said your sparks are like your life force," Mikaela said, her tone bewildered with an edge of fear. She turned to look up at Optimus, as if his brother would have some reassurance. "Once it's gone, it's gone. Right?"

                "Normally that is the case," Optimus agreed with a sigh. "But we have learned that there is something connected to his spark that is keeping it from extinguishing in its entirety."

                "Couldn't be the Allspark, could it?"

                He should probably have been surprised at how much the human female knew of the circumstances of his injury. But the machine had been turned on and the faint electrical hum of the electrodes now attached to his spark chamber was incredibly distracting.

                "No, we ruled that out," Wheeljack answered, sounding distracted as well. "He's had too many near-death experiences prior to that event for it to be that."

                "Okay, then what could it be?"

                "This conversation is somewhat surreal," he commented, glancing sideways as the engineer began to slowly adjust some more dials. He felt a static snap of energy pass through the electrodes to cascade around his spark chamber, leaving it feeling like he'd been dipped into a vat of extremely powerful paint thinner. "And that feels very disconcerting."

                "That's only twenty percent power."

                "I dread what thirty might feel like."

                "Was he always this sarcastic?" he heard the human ask, the question presumably aimed at his brother.

                Her voice sounded somewhat far away, and he could only wonder what other malfunctions in his sensory network the engineer's machine might cause. His brother seemed caught between amusement and anxiousness, perhaps stemming from the discomfort he was leaking through their link. An arc of electricity snapped through the attached wires again, making him jerk involuntarily. Above his helm, the lights began to flicker.

                "Whoa, what the hell!?"

                "That is not supposed to happen," Wheeljack commented from somewhere to his left, though for some reason the engineer's voice seemed to be echoing. His vision seemed to have become overly bright and unfocused as well. "Oh Primus..."

                "What is it, Wheeljack?" Optimus's voice seemed closer, though it had the same strange echo to it as everything else. He both felt and heard another snap as a third arc of electricity jolted down the wires into his spark. This time his reaction was more than just physical - he could not control the pained cry it tore from his vocalizer. "Shut it down!"

                Another shock tore into his spark and the cold of the medical berth against his back began to swallow everything else. The light that had begun to sear his optics shifted in quality, and though it still seemed to emanate from the medical lamps positioned above his helm - there was something different in their outline, something different in the texture of the ceiling beyond it. He opened his mouth to cry out again as yet another surge of energy passed through him, but no sound emerged.

                He felt a hand on his shoulder and at first thought it to be his brother's, but the shape of the digits were wrong, the weight was wrong. His vision began to blur, to cycle out of focus, but he caught a glimpse of darkened blue and the glow of crimson optics. Somewhere distant but also so close that he could have sworn it came from his own shorted out vocalizer, he heard someone whispering his name.

                " _Megatron."_

**Author's Note:**

> Credits : In this story I will be referencing Bumblebee's origins as developed by Karategal in her stories, as well as the destruction of the Youth Sectors, coined as 'Floatila' by Lady Tecuma in 'Sparks and Plasma'. I will also be using the concept of 'carrying' as developed by Litahatchee in her story 'Night Fire', as well as referencing her depiction of the Floatilla Massacre. These ideas are used with permission. If you wish to use them, do not ask me. You must obtain permission from these authors. That said, I reccommend that you read each and every story mentioned here, especially if you're a fan of Ironhide/Chromia, sparklings in general, or Bumblebee.


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